


first love / late spring

by cherryconke



Series: first love / late spring [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Felix, Artist/Model AU, Falling In Love, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nude Model Sylvain, Slow Burn, Social drinking, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22141930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryconke/pseuds/cherryconke
Summary: Sylvain’s gaze flicks over to a simple sheet of paper, pinned on top of all the rest, covering up a train schedule(save money, ride metro)and an advertisement for the University’s healthcare center(free condoms!), shining bright in its monotone simplicity, bold black letters stamped on shitty printer paper:Art Model Wanted.
Relationships: Background Dimitri/Claude - Relationship, Background Glenn/Holst - Relationship, Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Series: first love / late spring [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763203
Comments: 168
Kudos: 992





	1. beautiful strangers

_Oh fools, the magician bends the rules_ _  
__As the crowd watches his every move_ _  
__I’m just a shaking hand without a concrete plan_

_—_

“Sylvain. _Sylvain._ Hello? Pay attention, your sleeve is…” 

Linhardt’s hand darts out, catching the trailing fuzzy cuff of Sylvain’s maroon sweater as it dips dangerously close to the open tub of polymer adhesive on the table. The look Lin gives him is all-knowing and insufferable, eyes rolling as his hand darts out to screw the lid back on the glue, tacky residue sticking around the edges. 

“At least roll them up or something.”

“Sorry,” Sylvain winces, pulling his hand back and choosing to forgo the sweater altogether, pulling it off to hang over the back of the old, half-broken desk chair he’s perched on. He feels just as tired as Linhardt looks, having dropped like a corpse into bed after his shift at the bar last night; his brain yet to catch up with the tea he inhaled on his way here. Linhardt just rolls his eyes at him again, fastening the verdant mess of hair into a high, sloppy bun atop his head before leaning back down to examine their current project.

It’s an obscure George Inness piece – painted too early in his career to achieve the notoriety of _Peace and Plenty_ or the accolades of _In the Roman Campagna_ – completed during one of his first sojourns in Rome. It had arrived at the University in poor shape, having gone through a badly-executed conservation years ago involving aluminum interleaf and a too-shaky hand. Sylvain and Linhardt, as two of the top graduate students with the most experience working in the department’s conservation lab, had been tasked with restoring the painting to the artist’s vision as closely as possible.

It’s their third week on this project, of poring over every square centimeter of soft burnt sienna and flowing pastel hues; carefully unpeeling the thin sheet of muslin attached to the aluminum; scraping layers of wax, dirt, and grime off with meticulous skill. It’s exhausting, detail-oriented work, but Sylvain doesn’t really mind overly complicated projects like this, especially not with Lin, who, against all odds, is really quite a delight to work with: lazy most of the time, driven when he wants to be, and most importantly, infinitely more relaxing than the shifts Sylvain occasionally picks up at the bar.

They work side-by-side in companionable silence for another half-hour, the only noise in the lab the soft dulcet tones of some local station playing fizzy static from the ancient radio in the corner, mixing with the fuzzy sound of Linhardt painting solvent over the third layer of beeswax the oil paint is trapped under, dulling the rich tones of the paint. Sylvain follows closely after with gloved hands, gently rubbing puffs of cotton over the solvent to lift off the wax, revealing the true, brighter hues of the painting underneath.

The calm of mid-morning is interrupted by the cacophony of Sylvain’s phone, ringing with bright, blitzing tones. Sylvain pulls back from the canvas as Linhardt huffs out a sigh, their streak of unfettered concentration finally broken. Sylvain barely registers the roll of Lin’s eyes at him for the third time that day as he strips off his gloves, moving off to heat the kettle for tea while muttering something about it being time to take a nap, anyway. 

“He-ey, Sylvie.” Claude’s sweetened tenor washes into Sylvain’s ear when he slides his phone open, mellifluous in the way Sylvain’s come to recognize as his Claude-needs-a-favor voice. Sylvain sighs, unable to stop the small smirk fighting its way onto his lips as he meanders over to the wall of windows, gazing out at the sweep of dry leaves and crisp fall air over the University’s campus, all decadent brick buildings and walkways.

“What do you need this time, babe?”

Sylvain swears he can almost hear the flash of teeth grinning through the phone as his roommate and oldest friend chuckles at him, their years-old inside joke just as silly-stupid as the first time they’d fake-dated, trying to avoid the unwanted attention of a particularly creepy professor during their undergrad years. 

“Hey! Who says I need a favor?” 

“Claude. You _never_ call unless you need a favor. You know that, I know that…” Sylvain trails off, idly straightening the mess of papers and office supplies dumped on the windowsill. The lab was still adjusting to the nearing departure of Hanneman, the department chair and lab supervisor for decades. The lab had been in disarray for weeks as he slowly packed up his things to take with him into the blissful oblivion of retirement.

“Okay. Fine. Can you cover my shift tonight?” 

Claude’s tone takes a turn from confident to coy. Sylvain plucks his head up to look out of the window again, halfway blinded by the sharp autumn sun, his interest in the conversation finally piqued. “Oooh, did blondie finally get the guts to ask you out?”

“Hush. His name is Dimitri, and…” Claude pauses, huffs a sigh, and Sylvain can practically hear the eye roll happening on the other end of the line. “...Yes, he did, actually.”

Sylvain grins in response, pacing lazily down the length of the room towards the lab door, kicking his heels. As a bartender at one of the fancier restaurants in town, Claude was used to guys and girls alike falling head over heels for him on the regular – the number of scribbled digits scrawled on returned receipts could probably compile a whole phonebook at this point – but rarely had _he_ ever been the one forced to do the actual chasing. It had actually been kind of cute to watch in the beginning, Claude pacing their shared apartment while Sylvain and Hilda and Dorothea swathed themselves in blankets and a tangle of limbs on the couch, helping him draft carefully-planned texts to the mysterious blonde who showed up at the bar like clockwork every Thursday night.

Sylvain breathes a quiet sigh of relief, happy to hear that their flirtatious texts are finally moving in some — _any_ — direction, after weeks of stagnant progress. He pauses in his wandering down the hall at the community bulletin board, one of the dozens posted around campus, papered with everything from roommate-wanted ads to flyers advertising events and club meeting times. 

His plans of getting a good night’s sleep battle with the hopeful note in Claude’s voice, combined with the stack of bills on his desk in his room, piling up unopened. _Damn._

“Say no more, I’ve got you.”

Claude sighs out a held breath on the other end of the line, sharp and staticky and dripping relief into Sylvain’s ear. “Sylvain, you’re an angel. I owe you one.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sylvain smirks, scrubbing a hand through already-disheveled hair. His eyes drift over the pinboard, glazing over home-printed offers for voice lessons and babysitting, tearaway strips of numbers fluttering in the air-conditioned breeze. “So, should I expect you back tonight?”

“If things go well? No, hopefully not.”

Sylvain’s gaze flicks over to a simple sheet of paper, pinned on top of all the rest, covering up a train schedule _(save money, ride metro)_ and an advertisement for the University’s healthcare center _(free condoms!),_ shining bright in its monotone simplicity, bold black letters stamped on shitty printer paper: 

–

_Art Model Wanted_

_Looking for a reliable art model for a long-term (3–4 month) ongoing portfolio project. Must be able to hold extended poses for up to twenty minutes without moving. Previous modeling experience a plus. 4–6 hour sessions. Flexible hours. Serious inquiries only._

–

Sylvain skims the ad a few times, barely registering the message. Claude’s saccharine voice slips into his eardrum, pulling him once more back to reality. “I start at seven.”

“I’ll be there,” Sylvain replies, still half-distracted as he reaches out to rip a little paper rectangle strip free from its home, the first one gone from the sheet. He smooths the ripped edges between his fingers before pocketing it and clicking his phone shut.

–

Ten hours and two finished shifts later, Sylvain drags himself up the creaky wooden stairs and through the threshold of his apartment. Goose comes trotting at the sound of his keys in the lock, and Sylvain opens the door to the sight of her seated on the front mat, her tail wagging calmly.

“Hey, girl.” He leans down to give a few scratches behind her ear before she meanders back to her typical spot, curled up in front of the fireplace on a overly-plush dog bed, gifted by a completely-enamored Ashe the same week Sylvain had brought Goose home from the shelter.

Sylvain shucks his wool coat and shoes in a puddle at the front door and drops his keys on top of the whole messy pile. He undresses as he makes his way down the hallway and into the living room – unwinding the scarf from around his neck to drape over the back of the couch, his sweater and t-shirt tossed carelessly on an armchair. The contents of his pockets litter the dining table: wallet, phone, keys, a crinkled gum wrapper, stray crumpled slips of paper. He’ll pick up later, but if the late hour and the bomber jacket missing from the coat rack are any indication, Claude’s date is going very, very well.

Sylvain flicks the switch for the kettle and feeds Goose dinner before jumping in the shower, rinsing off the vaguely chemical smell of the lab and the sharp stink of alcohol from the bar. It’s nearly three in the morning when he finally falls into bed, a steaming mug of bergamot on his bedside table and Goose curled up beneath the covers at his feet. 

The neon glow of his phone screen illuminates his face as he shoots off a quick text to Claude _(congrats on the sex!)_ before flipping his phone screen-side down and rolling over, ready to pass out for a few hours before his shift at the lab tomorrow afternoon. Sylvain is nearly asleep when a new notification chimes, loudly bright in the dark of his room. His eyes skim over the message, blurring a little more each time.

Fuck. _Fuck._

The sender’s number isn’t saved to his phone, but Sylvain could recognize that area code in his sleep. His thumb moves slowly, as if he’s in a dream, tapping on the notification and scrolling through the conversation’s history. The timestamp of the text above this one is from nearly six months ago, still awaiting Sylvain’s reply. Five years ago, he’d been a big enough fool enough to think that his relationship with his brother could be mended simply because they shared the status of “disowned Gautier son”. He’s old enough to know better now.

A single line. One question. Correct grammar and everything, for once in Miklan’s life: 

_Have you heard from mom?_

–

The funeral preparations take an entire week and then some.

Sylvain puts his life on hold and ignores the hard knot in his stomach that grows with every mile marker in his rearview mirror as he drives south. It’s been five years since his last visit home; five years since he’d left with the clothes on his back and his car piled high with bags and boxes, all his worldly possessions jam-packed into the shitty little Volvo he’d bought on a whim, just to piss off his father whenever he saw it in their driveway.

The drive itself is half-traffic and half-pleasant, the cold streets of Montreal slowly bleeding into the rolling hills and crisp golden leaves of late autumn in Greenwich. Sylvain’s head is spinning from nerves and nostalgia and no sleep, so he keeps himself occupied and awake by calling each of his friends on speakerphone.

Linhardt hums over the quiet static of the car’s speakers when Sylvain tells him he won’t be able to work on the Inness restoration for at least a week, if not more. 

“That’s alright, Sylvain. Just means more time for research.” A pause, a snap of mint bubblegum between teeth. “And… I’m sorry about your father. My condolences.”

Ashe volunteers to take Goose for the week, promising to spoil her rotten. Sylvain doesn’t doubt it for a second. Gratitude crashes over him like a wave, and before he knows it, he’s blinking away the unexpected sting of tears from his eyes – for his friends and all the love they give so freely.

Mercedes heaves a quiet sigh that makes Sylvain’s heart shatter apart all over again; Dorothea’s voice cracks when she asks him, _are you okay, Sylvie? Like… actually okay?_

Claude falls uncharacteristically quiet at the news before offering to take all of Sylvain’s shifts at the bar. He ends up making it for the funeral later that week, getting one of the newer bartenders to cover him at the restaurant so he can make the six-hour drive south to stand side-by-side with Sylvain at the edge of his father’s grave. 

Sylvain floats adrift and untethered. The surreality of being back home, everyone together for the first time in years, doesn’t quite sink in, making him distracted and distant. Memories surface constantly, randomly, hitting him so hard it aches between his teeth and in his gut: the sharp scent of his mother’s perfume, clinging to every meticulously pressed piece of clothing she wears; the smear of fog hovering over the lake in front of the estate in the morning; the way they fit in the black town-car together, their mother quietly weeping into a tissue up front, Sylvain pushed up against the door in the backseat with Miklan opposite, each brother trying their hardest to disappear through the cracks.

When Miklan pulls Sylvain aside the night he arrives, he’s bone-weary from the drive and shaking with too many shitty cups of gas station coffee. Both brothers refuse to look the other fully in the eye or acknowledge the giant chasm of past trauma they’re dancing around, instead rehashing the thing that led them both here back to their childhood home – their father’s death. They talk for the first time in years over a shared pack of cigarettes on the third-floor balcony off the library, chain-smoking in the moonglow.

The car crash happened quick (like _that,_ and Miklan smacks his hand on the balcony ledge, lightning fast and so familiarly aggressive Sylvain can’t help but flinch), an unfortunate collision borne of a poorly-timed left turn and two inattentive drivers. His father’s death, though – that had been slow, a drawn-out affair that lasted all night and into the early morning. Emergency surgeries and resuscitations and biopsies and tests hadn’t been enough to save him. Marius Gautier died alone, early in the morning, hooked up to a hospital bed.

Sylvain can’t say he’s sad to have missed it.

The week leading up to the funeral is awful, full of too many half-hearted hugs from distant, unrecognizable relatives; too many cups of bitter, over-steeped tea sipped in the austere sitting room, sitting pretty and polite next to Mik’s seething form on the loveseat while friends and family wax poetic about all the good memories they had with his father; too many condolences and too many murmurs of _how tragic_ and far, far too many _thoughts and prayers._

How desperately Sylvain wants to disappear in those moments, to put on a repeat performance of five years ago. The argument, that awful tipping point, still echoes in his ears sometimes when he’s trying to sleep:

 _Sylvain, glaring daggers into his father’s stupidly smug face at the reaction he’d had when he came home from his sophomore year of college, head-over-heels for his very first boyfriend. The raw wound Miklan had left behind when he disappeared without a trace two years ago had barely faded to a dull ache in the Gautier household. “Well, that simply won’t do, Sylvain. What will everyone think? That_ both _our sons are sinners?”_

(Sylvain’s bank account had been cut off a week later. His father was nothing if not ruthless when it came to following through.)

When Sylvain finally unlocks the door to his apartment to drop his bag on the floor, all he feels is numb: numb when he strips down to shower, numb when he flips the kettle on to boil, numb as he empties his entire hastily thrown-together duffle bag into the washer. His attention only spikes when he sorts through the small stack of mail that’s accumulated on the counter while he waits for the water to warm – amongst the junk mail and flyers, Mercedes’s handwriting beams up at him from a small, thoughtful card. Sylvain smiles, small and true, in the quiet kitchen.

He’s trying to hunt down a spare magnet to pin the card to the fridge when a small scrap of paper catches his eye, fluttering beneath a wooden bishop magnet, a throwaway prize from some college competition Claude won years ago.

Sylvain pulls it free from the magnet’s grip, smoothing the crinkled-up paper out. Claude must’ve saved it for him after cleaning up the mess he’d left after Miklan’s text came through.

 _Art Model Wanted._ Ten digits follow the simple declaration.

It’d been bizarre, revisiting the ghosts of his old life – one comprised of old mansions and old money and old men like Marius Gautier making all the decisions and calling all the shots – but after all the years Sylvain spent away from home, he found himself completely revolted at the taste of luxury, disdain fizzing in his mouth at every show of opulence. But a quick glance at the pile of bills stacked on the counter brings a brief, traitorous thought to his mind – maybe he should’ve asked his mother for a little bit of money.

Maybe he’s too proud, or stubborn, or just plain stupid to not take advantage of his family’s vast amount of resources, but the thought vanishes as soon as it crosses his mind. He’d rather work a little harder, maybe pick up this modeling gig, than take the easy way out, accept his father’s money, and feel indebted and guilty.

Sylvain pads over to the couch, holding a scalding cup of tea in one hand, the little scrap of paper and his phone in the other. He stares down at it, diligently tapping out each tiny number into his phone. The cursor blinks, patient, waiting.

Well. Here goes nothing.

_And I could lie but it’s never made me feel good_ _  
__Inside I’m still so blue, can’t erase the hue_ _  
__It’s just colored over_

—

Felix works through his emotions in imperfect strokes, a flurry of memories synchronized with each careful application of paint on canvas. His hands fall into a hypnotising rhythm, one of _dip, stroke, stroke, stroke, mix, dip, repeat;_ one that quiets the whirl of thoughts in his head and the unsteady tremors in his hands when they’re not otherwise occupied. 

Blue is the color of grief: the lapis lazuli of his father’s eyes and his brother’s hair; the Prussian paint his mother had dripped across the floor of her studio before he was born, an aching reminder of the empty, her-shaped void in the house he grew up in; the delphinium summer sky the day his world had been ripped apart, two too many times for any lifetime.

Blue is the color of the tie around his neck the day he’d shown up to the cathedral, overdressed and underprepared, heat prickling in the corners of his chest as he sat in the pew next to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy of his youth. Blue is the color of the paper his father’s funeral program is printed on, the same one he’d skimmed with blurry eyes rimmed red with sorrow and salt, regret heavy on his cowardly tongue and in his paralyzed heart. 

It’s soothing, to just apply paint to a canvas, messy and fast and loose, letting the colors bleed and mix on his palette. Felix loves the repetition that comes from quick color studies like these, an easy place for his mind to wander, restless as ever, but still keep his hands productive.

It was something his mother had liked to do, tiny little practice pieces littering every nook and cranny of her messy studio; paint smeared on everything from the back of a receipt to a gum wrapper, crumpled in the corners of drawers and wadded up at the bottom of giant pitchers full of pencils and brushes.

Felix adds more paint to the plate, dipping a thin brush in the glossy blue to mix it with the others: cerulean, cobalt, campanula, a hint of ochre here and there.

Growing up, Felix had come to think of his mother’s studio as a sort of cemetery – not one that housed her body, but her mind. Glenn had always hated going in there, getting this weird, frozen look in his eyes whenever Felix had begged him to. Eventually, Felix had stopped asking him to come along, leaving Glenn to the myriad of other hobbies he indulged in over the years (piano, horseback riding, fencing, violin) and spending long afternoons there by himself, flipping through old sketchbooks, filling himself with equal parts love and longing for a woman he barely remembered.

Felix’s thoughts are interrupted by the chime of his phone, some bright, bubblegum tune Annette assigned herself forever ago. He sighs and dips his brush into the jar of water nearby, swirling it around before answering.

“Hi, Annie.” Felix taps the speakerphone button and pats the brush dry carefully on the thigh of his denim jeans. 

“Hi, ‘Lix! Listen, I’m at the market with Ashe and I’m wondering – do you want green, yellow, orange, or red for bell peppers? Oh, and how many limes?”

As she talks, Felix moves from his spot between the fireplace and the easel to the French doors.

This room was originally designed to be a dining room, but upon moving into the old Mile End flat, Felix immediately converted it into a studio space. Over the past year-and-a-half since moving in, the gravitational orbit of his life has slowly shifted to center around the little room. There’s a brick hearth on one wall, twin doors opening up to a tiny balcony on the other, overlooking the shady green grapevines of the ruelle verte below. It’s drafty in the winter and stuffy in the summer, and the vintage temperature dial is broken more often than not, but Ingrid’s grandmother is just about the best landlord Felix has ever had.

Late September sun shines through leafy branches into the little alleyway. Felix hums, distracted by the warmth of the light on his cheeks as he steps out onto the balcony, fingers fumbling in his pocket for a lighter. “Hmm, maybe one of each? Except for green, get a poblano pepper instead. And three limes should be enough.”

 _Click. Click. Inhale._

Felix can hear the soft _tsk_ of annoyance from Annette down the line. He rolls his eyes half-heartedly, already anticipating her slightly annoyed tone.

“Felix Hugo, I can _hear_ you smoking, you’re not sneaky at all. What happened to quitting, hm?”

Trout chirrups softly at his feet, headbutting Felix’s calf insistently before joining him out on the balcony, a furry orange tail curling around his leg before he goes to sniff the little planter box trailing flowers across the deck. Felix leans down to give a soft scratch between his ears, exhaling smoke into the crisp autumn air with a soft chuckle and a wry smile. “See you soon, Annie.”

–

“Hey, watch it!”

Annette’s fingers pinch around Felix’s wrist, pulling him away from the frying pan sizzling with oil and peppers and strips of beef, the third shake of the chili powder jar interrupted by her hand.

“Are you _trying_ to kill me, ‘Lix?” The expression on Annette’s face is fond, tinged with a dash of irritation, as she plucks the spice jar from his hand, quickly screwing the top back on before slotting it between tumeric and sumac on the shelf.

 _Oh, right. No spice._ “Ah, shit. Sorry, I forgot.” 

Satisfied, she drifts past where Ashe is lounging across the back of Felix’s couch, flicking idly through Netflix with one hand, scratching between Trout’s ears with the other. Tonight is movie night, a tradition the three – well, four, if Ingrid could ever get anywhere on time – have held for years now. Every other Thursday, they rotate who cooks and who picks the movie, eating way too many of Annette’s sea-salt chocolate chip cookies, cozied up on the couch together, laughing until they cry.

Felix keeps one eye on the sizzling saucepan and one on Annette as she comes to a pause in the makeshift studio space, cluttered with canvases both freshly new and half-complete, jars of brushes, messy stacks of sketchbooks and loose papers. 

“Is this one done?”

Annette’s voice rings out from across the flat, and Felix drags his gaze from the peppers to the canvas she’s standing in front of, hip cocked. Ashe’s eyes flick, catlike, to the painting, then to Felix, then back to the TV.

It’s a massive canvas of stretched linen propped up against the wall, nearly coming up to Annette’s chest where she stands in front of it. Spots of yellow dapple blurry blue lines of every shade, from pastel to navy and everything in between. A wobbly smudge of carmine delineates the boundary between sky and sea, a vaguely bloody sunset over the water.

“Nah, not yet.” Felix gives the fajitas one last stir before turning the heat from _low_ to _off_. 

“Well, do you know what it's gonna be?” Annette moves back to the kitchen and begins pulling out forks and knives and plates. Felix looks down, paying extra attention to the lime he’s quartering.

 _The sky the day of my dad’s funeral._

Felix pauses, shrugs nonchalantly, trying to convince himself of the lie. “I- I’m not sure yet.”

Ashe’s head pops over the back of the sofa, waving Felix’s phone around in one hand.

“Hey, ‘Lix, your phone buzzed!” 

“It’s probably Ingrid, I bet she’s downstairs.” Felix winces and swears under his breath as lime juice leaks into a hangnail. “Annie, do you mind checking? I’m almost done with the guacamole.”

Ashe passes Annette the phone over the back of the sofa and promptly returns to his hunt for the perfect movie. She stands with one hand on the doorknob, the other peering at the screen.

“Oh, no… it’s not… Huh.”

Felix nearly scalds his thumb retrieving the tortillas from the oven. “Is it Ingrid?”

Annette shakes her head, frowning slightly. “No, it’s a number you don’t have saved. It says… they’re responding to your ad.” Her eyebrows quirk up, ever the investigator. Felix’s stomach drops a little bit when he looks up to see the mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Did you get a Tinder and not tell us about it?”

“What? Felix got a Tinder?” Ashe chimes in, green eyes arcing wide and round as he looks eagerly over at Annie. 

“God, no. _No._ I’m just…” Felix pauses, struggling to find the right words to frame it. “I’m trying to find someone to model for my last gallery pieces.”

Annette frowns, sounding doubtful as she peers back down at his phone, examining the text again. “You put an _ad_ up? Where? Craigslist? Facebook?”

“What? No.” Felix pauses, face pulled into a frown as he looks up at Annette and Ashe, curious expressions mirroring each other’s. “On the bulletin board at campus.”

Annette just rolls her eyes and hands Felix back his phone. “God, ’Lix, you’re _so_ old-fashioned.”

The conversation gets derailed when the callbox buzzes loudly, Ingrid finally showing up with two bottles of wine and a jar of pickled jalapenos, courtesy of Dedue, pressed into Felix’s hands with a brief kiss to each of his cheeks.

Dinner is lively, as it always is, passing chips and salsa around the coffee table as the opening credits of some obscure fantasy film from the 80s starts up. The threads of their lives are so tangled together by this point that the conversation flows easy and light, eventually dying down as they sink back into the cushions, full of fajitas and wine.

Felix’s flat has faded into near-darkness by the time the movie ends, Ingrid and Ashe asleep against each other as the credits roll quietly. Felix is idly scrolling through Instagram when Annette presses a refilled cup into his hand, her head settling in the crook of his shoulder comfortably, Trout spilling across both of their laps, ragdoll-like in sleep.

“So... are you gonna text back?” Annette’s voice is quiet, less teasing and more serious this time around. Felix swallows the hard lump in his throat, letting his phone drop. She’s the one person he’s told his plans to for the gallery show, spilled out like a shameful secret on his balcony well-past two in the morning one night after a party, the fear of failure made quiet through the haze of alcohol. 

“Yes… No.” Felix sighs, scrubbing a hand through his bangs. “I don’t know.” 

“Hey, this is big! I can’t believe you put an ad up. You’ve been talking about starting that series for forever.”

“Yeah.” Felix pauses, an anxious bubble rising in his throat. “Yeah, I have.”

Annette falls quiet as he picks up his phone again, the iridescent glow lighting up both of their faces as they look down at the screen together. Felix flips to the text: sent three hours ago.

It’s overwhelmingly tempting to ignore it, to simply swipe left and move on with his life. God knows he’s chickened out a multitude of times over this, argued himself in circles about whether or not to even post the flyer in the first place. Felix is used to the sometimes-suffocating pressure of the Fraldarius family name, silent and heavy on his and Glenn’s shoulders, but something about this particular idea scares him. The idea of showing the world the most intimate, private parts of him sends nervous shivers down his spine, half-excited, half-terrified.

Annette nudges his shoulder gently. Felix taps out a message, deletes it, types it out again, hovers over the _send_ button. The tightness in his chest falls away, just a little bit, when he finally presses it. He can feel the curl of Annie’s smile against his shoulder, buoying him up. 

_[Unknown Number]:_ _  
__hi, are you still looking for a model for your project? i saw the ad on the art department board_ _  
__Sent 6:32pm_

 _[Me]:_ _  
__Yes, I am._ _  
__Sent 10:27pm_

 _  
__If I saw you on the street, would I have you in my dreams tonight?_

–

Sylvain walks at a fast clip from the metro station to the coffee shop, barely taking the time to appreciate the bright colors of Montreal in the fall: leaves every shade of pastel yellow to crimson-purple to everything in between, crisp sunlight filtering through the branches to dapple and dance on the sidewalk. Sylvain mentally runs through the short list of things he knows about his potential future employer as he rounds the corner and jogs across a crosswalk, not wanting to be late.

He’d given only his name as _Felix_ – just Felix, no last name, rendering it impossible for Sylvain to look him up (which he most definitely had _not_ tried to do). Unsurprisingly, given the location of the ad, he’s a student at the same university Sylvain works at, a senior in the art program, almost halfway through his final year. 

Felix’s texts are all proper capitalization and punctuation (stark in contrast to Sylvain's liberal use of emojis and exclamation marks), getting straight to the point after a few introductory texts: _Name? Age? What do you do for work? When can you meet to discuss details?_

The café Felix picks to meet at is only one metro stop away from Sylvain’s own flat. It’s quaint and cozy, nestled between a book store and a deli in a brick building covered with ivy. The quiet Monday afternoon is filled with the soft hiss of the espresso machine, mixed with the sound of university students typing away on their laptops, the thrum of soft acoustic guitar over the speakers a soft background beat to it all. 

Sylvain unwinds the scarf from his neck as he scans the shop, none of the unfamiliar faces looking back at him until his gaze comes to rest on the man in line before him, his face half-turned towards where Sylvain’s come through the door.

Inky hair, thrown back in a high, loose ponytail, frames his face, a messy fringe of bangs resting right above unfairly thick, dark lashes. He’s small, shorter and slimmer than Sylvain, made a smidge taller by the platform boots he’s wearing, drowning in what looks to be a pile of dark woolen fabric. After a few moments, Sylvain realizes it’s a hugely oversized scarf, obscuring most of the lower half of his face. The curved bow of his lips peek out from the edge of the fabric, and higher up, his cheeks are flushed a deep pink from the cold. There’s a thin metal ring through his septum, and several more decorating his upper ear. His features are sharp and pointed, but still somehow beautifully delicate.

_Shit. He’s gorgeous._

Amber eyes catch Sylvain’s, a mirror of his own expression – searching out a stranger. Sylvain’s mouth becomes very, very dry when he realizes that this is, in fact, the mysterious artist he’s been texting on and off for the past week; that this is the same sharp gaze that might be scanning him up and down for hours on end, if all goes well today. His heart rate picks up a little at the thought of it. 

“Hi.” Sylvain’s tongue unsticks itself from the roof of his mouth as he gives a little two-fingered wave, folding the scarf over his arm. “Are you Felix?”

A spark of recognition catches in his eyes. Sylvain finds himself utterly entranced by the small, half-amused smile that his lips curl into as Sylvain moves forward, offering his hand.

“Yeah. I take it you’re Sylvain?”

Felix’s voice is all rough velvet, a pleasant tenor that sends quiet shivers down Sylvain’s spine. He likes the way Felix’s tongue wraps around the sound of his name quite a bit. Maybe too much. Sylvain reaches out, his hand encompassing Felix’s in a brief handshake, pleasantly surprised by the juxtaposition between the two: big where Felix is not, warm where Felix is cold. 

Sylvain nods, eyes crinkling at the corners as he looks down at Felix. “Yep. Nice to meet you.”

 _“Next!”_ Their handshake is broken by the call of the barista, and they move together up to the cash register. 

“I’ll take a large drip, no room, and…” Felix pauses, turning to look up at Sylvain. 

“A large hot chocolate, extra whip, please.” 

Sylvain doesn’t notice the raised eyebrow Felix shoots him at his order – he’s too busy trying to pull his wallet out of the pocket of his denim jacket. Felix beats him to it, handing a glossy credit card over to the cashier. 

“Oh, I meant to get that.” Sylvain sheepishly rubs the back of his neck, ruffling his hair there, a nervous tick that never quite died in adolescence. “Thanks.”

Felix just nods and reaches to take a steaming mug from the barista. Sylvain mirrors him, balancing the small tower of whipped cream carefully.

The coffee shop smells like the citrusy oil of polished wood; like cracked leather book covers and fresh coffee. Felix leaves his own faint trail of smoke and cinnamon that Sylvain follows across the café, weaving through tables and chairs towards a little booth in the back corner. 

Sylvain sips on his drink, watching Felix unwind the seemingly never-ending scarf from his neck. He looks like a perfect picture of late autumn, with the delicate brush of lashes against cold-flushed cheeks and windswept hair. A dark turtleneck sits snugly against the sharp line of his jaw, clinging to sinewy arms and a lean frame. 

Scarves and coats off, Sylvain smiles across the booth at him. “So…”

Felix clears his throat and wraps slim fingers around his mug. His shoulders hunch in a little, eyes darting away to trace the wood grain of the table. If Sylvain were to guess, he’d peg him as somewhere between nervous and reluctant. “Yeah. So.”

Sylvain waits patiently, trying not to look too eager as he takes a sip of his cocoa, savoring the sweet mix of chocolate and cream on his tongue.

“I know this is kind of a weird job interview…” Felix trails off, sounding unsure.

Sylvain waves his hand nonchalantly. “Hey, no worries. Ask away. I’m an open book.” Alright, technically untrue, but he wants to put Felix at ease if he can. 

Felix gives him a funny look, one Sylvain can’t quite pin the meaning of: one eyebrow arched, mouth twisting into a cute little pouty frown.

“So, what exactly do you do? You said over text you work at the University,” Felix asks, looking down into his mug. 

“Yeah. I’m a grad student, but I’m taking this semester easy. I’m just TA-ing for a few of Byleth’s classes and I work in Hanneman’s lab on the side.”

Felix perks up at this, eyes meeting Sylvain’s as he leans a little closer in and rests an elbow on the table, chin perched on the back of his hand. “In the Art History department?”

Sylvain nods, sipping at the quickly-melting cream in his mug. “Yep. I majored in it for undergrad – you’re an art major, yeah?” Felix returns the nod, and Sylvain does his best not to think about how pretty he looks, sitting across from him, ponytail bobbing in the afternoon light. “You’re probably all finished with the theory classes by now though, right?”

“Yeah. I only have two semesters left.” 

A few things click into place for Sylvain. “Wait, is this for the senior gallery show?”

Felix blushes a shade of pink that reminds Sylvain of peach sorbet and summer sunsets. “Yeah. I have most of the pieces done already, but I’ve been putting off the last few.”

Sylvain grins across the table at him. “I suppose that’s where I come in.”

Felix nods again. “Yeah. I’ve had this idea for awhile, it’s just…” He breaks off to shake his head and sip his coffee. “Sorry. I haven’t told very many people about it.”

A dozen questions spring to Sylvain’s mind, but instinct tells him to tamp down his curiosity. The last thing he wants is to seem overeager and scare Felix off. “You don’t have to go into detail if you don’t want to. I’m still happy to help.”

Felix’s gaze snaps to his, sharply wary. Sylvain waits, a small smile on his face as he lets the silence stretch between them, and watches Felix fiddle distractedly with his sleeve. 

“Most of the other pieces are landscapes, but I’ve been wanting to add a portrait or two.”

“What’s the theme this year?” Sylvain asks. He’s pretty sure it was something broody and corny the year he graduated, vaguely recalling the museum’s wing filled with sharply contrasted photographs and angsty smears of paint on canvas. Sylvain and Claude had gone for the free wine, the free cheese, and the art, in that order.

 _“Lovely Dark.”_ Felix makes a face, and Sylvain can’t help but laugh softly at the way his nose scrunches up in distaste, a lopsided little smirk on his face. A fleeting feeling hits low in his stomach, equal parts dreamily romantic and hopefully idiotic. It takes him a moment to recognize it by name: a crush.

“Ooh, how mysterious,” Sylvain teases. He swears that all of the serotonin in his brain floods into his bloodstream at once when Felix huffs out a sharp, amused laugh.

“Nah, not really.” Felix’s smile softens and he takes another sip of his coffee. 

The last time Sylvain felt butterflies like this was years ago, before he’d torn himself from the self-destructive path he’d been hellbent on ruining himself on – filling his days with empty conversations and his nights with company between the sheets. Flirting had always come naturally to Sylvain, but he’d gotten good at it over time, too, treating the whole song-and-dance as he would any other strategy game: figuring out which smiles and jokes had the best rate of return, calculating every move three steps ahead of his partner.

Three years ago, Claude had given him the name and number of his therapist’s office. Sylvain still sees her every other week – he’s yet to miss an appointment.

“So,” Felix sips. “Do you have any experience modeling?”

“I mean, I don’t think the dinky magazine spreads my mother forced me to do when I was a kid count. So… no? It wouldn’t be the first job I’ve had to learn on the spot, though.” Sylvain flashes Felix a small, dimpled smile. “I’m a quick study.”

“Ah, okay. And, uh–” Felix’s pale fingers come up to push a stray lock of hair behind his ear. “Would you be okay with nude poses?” Felix’s face is stained red all the way to the tips of his ears, lashes catching in the filtered sunlight as he rushes into his next sentence, face pulling into a worried expression. “It’s fine if you’re not, we can drape–”

“Yeah, of course. Whatever you need.” The crooked smile Felix gives Sylvain is even sweeter than the last chocolatey dregs in his mug. It prompts Sylvain to be bold, shooting Felix a little wink. “I’d just be happy to be your muse.”

–

Sylvain leaves the café unable to wipe the dumb smile off his face. He carries the feeling all the way home, a warm bubble in his chest when he thinks about Felix’s fingers wrapped around his when they said goodbye and parted ways, the giant blanket-scarf draped over his shoulders once more, the ends of his ponytail curled up just the tiniest bit as he walked the opposite direction Sylvain was headed. 

Felix’s promise to text him with his decision by the end of the week stays in the back of Sylvain’s mind as he continues with his day, checking chores off of his list: taking Goose out for a long walk, folding his laundry, going grocery shopping. He doesn’t even realize that he’s checking his phone more often than usual until Dorothea plucks it from his hand when they’re out for ice cream later that night, flicking him teasingly in the middle of his forehead, _you’re not even texting anyone, Sylvie. What do you keep checking for?_

He’s reading on the couch, Goose curled up in a little donut next to him, when his phone finally chimes and lights up. Sylvain pushes his reading glasses a little further up the bridge of his nose as he opens the text. His face falls into a wide, easy smile when he reads the message on the screen.

 _[Felix]:_  
 _Are you free next Monday afternoon?_ _  
_Sent 11:34pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed!! some ~fun facts~
> 
> the painting Sylvain and Linhardt are restoring is a fictionalized one, but the artist [George Inness](https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/inne/hd_inne.htm) is very much real! If you found the art conservation/restoration scene interesting, go check out [Baumgartner Restoration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kznj1NZN90A&t=1729s) channel on Youtube!
> 
> inspiration for the Gautier estate can be found on [this](https://www.sothebysrealty.com/eng/sales/greenwich-ct-usa) extremely cursed website 😂
> 
> Felix's flat overlooks a [ruelle verte](https://untappedcities.com/2013/08/07/montreals-ruelles-vertes-green-alleyways-help-the-environment-and-create-a-sense-of-community/) – a "green alley." Montreal has over a hundred of these safe, shared community spaces for kids to play in, gardening, neighborhood parties and gatherings, etc!
> 
> –
> 
> i can't thank [levi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviicorpus), [cha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akhikosanada/), and [isaac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redeyedwrath/) enough for beta-ing + listening to me ramble about this au <3 
> 
> i made a [companion playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0bQCzH8x9ZKZeuZ3FchI5E?si=VXY60jSuTC-uHjFXNNrmuw) for this fic – i'll be adding to it with chapter updates!
> 
> hmu on twitter – [@cherryconke](https://twitter.com/cherryconke)!


	2. i think you're alright

_I cannot look twice without falling right_ _  
_ _Into the sweet and tender line between_ _  
_ _Something I can and can never be_

_—_

Sylvain is late to their first session.

It starts in the morning, when his alarm fails to go off and he shoots out of bed in a wild panic, rushing through his shower and cutting Goose’s walk three blocks short. Chaos cascades into a domino effect, each minute bleeding into the next too quickly. When he finally climbs up the metro stairs at the same station he’d gotten off to go to the café last week, his phone reads _9:37am._ Well, shit. At least he hadn’t had the time to get nervous.

That’s when Sylvain decides to just say _fuck it_ – he’d rather show up with a reason to be late than look like a lazy fool – so, when he arrives at the door of Felix’s flat, painted a bright jade green, he’s balancing a large black coffee, an iced tea, and two bagels from the deli down the street in his hands, nudging the buzzer for _#3 – Fraldarius_ with one elbow.

As he waits for Felix to come fetch him, Sylvain takes a step back. The little brick building sits tucked back on a quiet street in Mile End, nestled among narrow duplexes of every color. Sun shines down on the late autumn day, one of the last few clear skies of the season before the chill sets in and a thick layer of snow will blanket the city like it does every year. Sylvain flashes a smile and a little wave to an older woman sweeping the sidewalk. She returns his grin with a friendly smile as the door clicks open. 

“No room,” Sylvain says cheerily when Felix appears before him, handing over the coffee cup, careful not to scald either of their fingers. He watches Felix’s dark brows, initially knitted together in confusion, soften into a slightly amused expression.

Today, Felix looks just as beautiful as he had last week in the café, but in a softer, more domestic sort of way; his long, choppy hair spills from a high messy bun rather than a ponytail, loose strands escaping here and there. He’s wearing a black turtleneck – Sylvain’s coming to suspect he has something of a uniform – but the sleeves of this one are a little frayed and stained with smears of dried paint. 

“Thanks,” Felix replies, eyes flicking quickly over the bag of bagels Sylvain’s still holding, then to Sylvain, then to the elderly woman still sweeping leaves into a neat pile behind them.

“Bonjour, Mme. Galatea,” Felix calls, giving her a quick wave before opening the door wider to let him in. Sylvain thinks that, just maybe, the caffeine and carbs have redeemed his tardiness, but his hope quickly dies when Felix’s eyes narrow in on him.

“Were you flirting with my landlady?”

“Wha– No!” Sylvain follows Felix up a narrow set of stairs, still juggling their breakfast. “I was just saying hi, that’s all.”

They round the corner on the third floor and come to a stop in front of a white door, marked _#3_ in brass. Felix doesn’t bother looking back at Sylvain when he replies, “Good.”

The door swings open to reveal one of the most charming apartments Sylvain has ever seen.

It’s light and airy, all high ceilings and herringbone floors and arched windows. The layout is simple and symmetrical – the kitchen blends into the living room, with two sets of French doors leading to different rooms on either side; Sylvain can see the edge of a low mattress inside one of them from where he stands in the entryway. 

What Sylvain’s drawn to the most is the sheer amount of architectural detail. The entire place is something out of a Victorian daydream: ornate ceiling molding, complete with a delicate pendant chandelier in the center of the big room, dresses up the otherwise plain white walls; a bench-seat bay window overlooks the little gardened alley two stories below; built-in bookshelves are stacked full with sketchbooks and Polaroids.

It’s a little messy, very charming, and the exact opposite of the condos that have been popping up everywhere in Sylvain’s neighborhood, flat and shiny and new.

He _loves_ it.

His staring is interrupted by a loud, distinct _meow._ Sylvain smiles down at the fluffy orange-and-white cat headbutting his shins, looking up at him with bright green eyes and another drawling _mew_. “Who’s this?”

“That’s Trout. Little shit.” The corners of Sylvain’s mouth lift up in a little smile at the warm fondness in Felix’s voice. Felix reaches a hand out and Sylvain passes the bag of bagels over.

“Hi, Trout,” he says, bending low to greet the cat, who immediately pushes his face insistently against his cupped palm. Trout starts purring, bottlebrush tail curling around Sylvain’s wrist.

Felix moves past him into the kitchen, clutching the coffee and bag of bagels like a lifeline. “Make yourself at home.”

Sylvain watches as Felix moves around the kitchen, gathering napkins and setting their breakfast out on the counter: two bagels, one poppyseed, one sesame, both smeared with cream cheese and piled high with salmon.

“Take your pick,” Sylvain says as he continues showering love on Trout, who’s now starting to drool a little bit. “The line was too long at St-Viateur, I hope you’re alright with Fairmount.” 

Felix helps himself to the sesame bagel. Sylvain bites back the foolish smile he feels spreading across his face – he’s always preferred sweet over savory, himself. Sylvain stands back up, much to Trout’s chagrin, and moves to take his bagel. 

“Fairmount’s better anyway,” Felix says, swallowing a mouthful of bagel. Sylvain keeps his eye roll to himself, because the last thing he wants to do is piss Felix off on their first day of working together over _bagel discourse_ of all things. “Thanks again. Breakfast was a good idea.” 

“No worries.” 

They eat together, standing in the kitchen, and contrary to how Sylvain had assumed today would go, it’s anything but awkward. The silence they share is casual and companionable, broken only by the occasional crinkle of deli paper. It’s Sylvain who eventually interrupts the quiet, crumpling the wrapper up in his hand as he polishes off the last of the bagel. 

“So, what did you have in mind?” Sylvain asks, clearing his throat. One of Felix’s eyebrows quirks up at him as he chews slowly. “For today, I mean.”

“I wanted to do some warm-up sketches, maybe a couple of quick color studies. These will be more portraits than just figure-drawings, so I’d like to get a base palette figured out for you. To use in the rest of the finished pieces.” Felix talks, slow and thoughtful, as they make their way further into the apartment, passing a large, low sectional sofa and a coffee-table strewn with sketchpads and books and various console controllers. 

Sylvain’s only a little distracted by the curl of Felix’s black-painted fingernails around the coffee cup as he nods. “Sounds great.”

The first poses are _just to get a feel for it_ Felix explains as Sylvain undresses in the quiet morning light streaming through the apartment’s windows, folding his wool coat and sweater in a neat pile over the back of Felix’s couch. Trout immediately hones in on the pile, making himself a cozy bed in his clothes.

He brought a robe, a dark cottony thing that cinches around his waist and cuts across the tops of his thighs, just shy of too short, recommended to him by Linhardt. _You don’t want to walk around during breaks completely naked, do you?_ If he was being honest, Sylvain didn’t think that sounded too bad at all, but looking back at the way his chest had flushed beneath his shirt collar at the sight of Felix smiling across the café booth at him, it’s probably better to try and keep things as professional as possible for fear of embarrassing himself during one of their sessions.

Sylvain’s fingers are busy curling around the hem of his t-shirt when Felix interrupts him from beyond the open double-doors, moving around a large table, pulling out pencils and paper and paints. “We’ll start over here. Clothes on, I think, for now.”

Felix sounds confident and decisive, far more so than Sylvain feels in that moment. He takes a deep breath, a familiar attempt to settle the gentle thrum of nervous energy crawling beneath his skin, before moving into the dining-room-converted-studio-space.

Floor-to-ceiling windows flank another set of French doors, which lead off onto a little balcony overlooking the ruelle verte. A blocked-off fireplace sits on the opposite wall, the hearth clean and free of everything but a few tall candlesticks. Stacks of canvases line the room, leaning up against the wall and floor, and Sylvain’s eyes are immediately drawn to them. “Are these the other pieces for the show?”

Felix’s gaze flicks up to him from where he’s standing in front of the easel, picking a handful of specific brushes out of a giant flower vase full of them. “Yeah. These ones are all works in progress, though. I’m keeping the finished ones stored on campus for now, but I have pictures of them.”

Sylvain tries very hard to ignore the way his heart thrums as Felix approaches, his figure cutting a dark shadow in the light-filled room, swiping through his phone. “Scroll left.”

Blue and yellow and white mix together into something soft and ethereal, a hazy daydream of a scene: clouds and sea and sky blending into one. Sylvain knows the luminescent pixels don’t do it justice, could hardly begin to capture the depths of color and texture: the soft light, dark shadows and sweeping, distinct brush strokes. 

“Felix,” Sylvain breathes out, swiping through each photo slowly, “these are _beautiful._ ”

He plucks his head up to see Felix looking over at him, disbelief flitting across his face. “I’m not just saying that. I see a lot of art, but the colors and composition of these are phenomenal.” 

Sylvain’s heart thrums, from excitement more now than nerves. When he’d plucked that little piece of paper from the bulletin board a few weeks ago, he hadn’t assumed it would lead to much – if anything, maybe a second-year student trying to get more practice in before the final round of portfolio cuts, or posing for a class at one of the local community colleges in his spare time.

What Sylvain hadn’t expected, what caught him so incredibly off-guard, was Felix: easily flustered, perpetually pouty, devastatingly gorgeous Felix. He’s talented, so much so that it makes Sylvain’s heart rise up in his throat at the thought of sitting in front of his easel, the object of all his attention. Sylvain’s hand only wavers a little bit when he hands him the phone back.

Felix brushes off the compliment, scoffing a bit as he looks away. The light flush across his cheekbones betrays the twist of bitterness in his eyes. “I keep forgetting you majored in Art History.”

Sylvain can’t help but quirk a smile, easy and dimpled, down at him. There’s something about Felix, his harsh edges and sharp eyes, that makes Sylvain feel like he’s mere seconds away from melting into a puddle on the floor. “I have a soft spot for impressionism. I’m actually restoring an Inness at work right now.”

“You’ll have to show me sometime,” Felix murmurs, all quiet and shy, the words slipping, almost unbidden, out of his mouth. Felix almost looks as surprised as Sylvain does at the admission, eyes flashing over in a steely look immediately after. Sylvain stays standing, watching as he moves back over to his easel, gesturing to the low wooden stool in the middle of the room.

“Get comfortable, whatever feels natural. I’ll direct you more later. These are just warm-ups.”

The sketchpad propped on the easel is big, but from the angle he’s sitting at, Sylvain can see Felix’s face over the edge of the paper. He watches as Felix’s tongue darts out, fleeting, in concentration as he flips to a fresh sheet. The glint of piercings – two, maybe three, by the looks of it – flash in the sunlight against the pink of his tongue. Sylvain feels a rush of gratitude for the stool he’s seated on, because he’s suddenly very, _very_ weak in the knees.

“Five minutes okay?” Felix asks, and Sylvain just nods, his tongue temporarily stuck to the roof of his mouth. He feels a little shaky, the tick of wild energy pulsing beneath his skin as Felix sets a timer on his phone.

 _Natural._ Right. He’s got this. 

And, surprisingly, against all odds, it turns out he _does._

It’s a little awkward at first – he’s sweaty, hyper-aware of the precise location of all of his limbs down to the exact angle of his pinky finger, but once he starts breathing deep, even breaths, the tension fades and bleeds into something steadier. 

They’re quiet through the handful of easy poses Sylvain moves into, each one marked by the soft chime of Felix’s phone alarm. Soft music floats through the open doors from the living room speakers, haunting and beautiful, punctuated by the familiar scrape of charcoal against paper. 

It isn’t until the fourth pose – he’s sitting on the stool, one leg fully extended, the other bent at the knee, one shoulder askew, looking towards Felix – that Sylvain gets to watch him, _really_ watch him, work. He can’t see what’s taking shape on the canvas, but Felix’s hands are quick and dexterous, steady and sure as they whirl across the paper in a flurry of charcoal. The flick of amber eyes, searing into Sylvain where he sits, feels warm where it studies him – his broad hands, the curve of his shoulders, the waves of his hair. 

The eighth time the alarm chimes softly, Felix puts the charcoal down and carefully sets the last sketch facedown on the stack atop the others. Sylvain breathes deep, limbs cut loose like a marionette doll. He rolls out his wrists, stretches his arms over his head, his t-shirt riding up his stomach.

When Felix speaks for the first time in an hour, it’s a single syllable, voice rough from disuse, “Break?” 

Sylvain clenches his fingers and toes to get the blood moving again. He takes a sip of his tea, the ice long since melted, and watches Felix move towards the double doors opposite him. “Sure.”

The balcony is small, as most are in the old parts of Montreal – big enough for two cafe chairs, a tiny table crammed in between, and a couple of flowerpots, but not much else. Trout immediately wakes himself from his nap atop Sylvain’s sweater to follow them out into the fresh air, his whiskered nose sniffing at the cold. 

Sylvain takes a seat as Felix pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his pocket. He offers Sylvain the box, eyebrow pulling up in a question. “Smoke?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” Sylvain accepts one and leans in, eyes focused on Felix’s face as his hand reaches across the table to light it up for him. He breathes deep, inhaling manufactured smoke and the scent of Felix – cinnamon, cloves, leather, and paint – sitting so close their knees nearly touch. “Thanks.”

Below them, an older man waters a large flowerpot bursting with barely-bloomed begonias; a small group of children race their bicycles down the path, their bells and laughter ringing bright in the morning air. The scene, so casually domestic, brings a smile to Sylvain’s face. 

“So,” he pauses, taking a long inhale, thumbing the ash into the ceramic tray on the table between them, “why Montreal?”

Felix looks over at him, eyebrows creasing into a small frown. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re not from here–” Felix’s eyes narrow at Sylvain’s assumption, unsure of whether or not he means it as a jab. Sylvain can’t help but laugh at how easily ruffled he gets. “Easy. No accent.”

“Ah.” Felix nods and takes another drag off his cigarette. Smoke swirls in the air around them, made lazy and slow by the cold. They watch the alley below them for a couple of quiet moments. 

“So, what brought you here?” Sylvain prompts again. Felix isn’t exactly the talkative type, but Sylvain is nothing if not determined. 

Felix shrugs, as if the answer is obvious. “My brother moved here a few years before I did, and I wanted to be close to my niece.” A flick of his wrist, tapping the ash from the tip. “Besides, home isn’t anything special.” 

He gives a hollow little laugh, tossing Sylvain a sardonic smile that makes his heart flutter and crack in the same moment. 

“Yeah. I can relate.” Sylvain leaves it at that, thinking of last week, walking the hallways of his family home like a ghost. “How old is your niece?”

Felix’s smile spreads like wildfire across his face “She’s six turning seven.” 

His hands are already busy pulling out his phone, turning it around to angle up at Sylvain. It’s his lock screen: a photo of Felix with a little girl perched on his shoulders. She’s the spitting image of him, but with blue eyes instead of amber, her face pulled into a delighted laugh, fingers wound around the set of braids Felix’s long hair is woven into. Her own hair is curly and wild and so black it’s nearly navy against the fluffy trim of her winter coat. Felix is giving the camera a crooked wide smile, one that mirrors the one on his face now. 

“That’s Max.” Felix’s voice is filled with a warmth Sylvain hasn’t heard before, fiercely loyal yet overwhelmingly soft. Sylvain breaks out into a grin, eyes crinkling at the corners. 

“Aw. She’s a cute kid.”

Felix nods. “Yeah, she is. It makes sense, everyone says my brother is a looker too.” His eyes flick away from Sylvain’s, almost daring him to contradict. He nearly does, too – he wants to protest, say _no, you’re gorgeous too,_ but then he realizes that both of their cigarettes are down to little stubs. Felix lets out one long exhale, stretching his arms over his head.

“Ready?”

Felix gives a little amused smile at Sylvain’s eagerness. “Yeah.” He scoops up Trout, who immediately goes into a limp puddle in his arms, purring almost obnoxiously loud, and carries him inside.

Sylvain rearranges himself back on the stool as Felix sets a fresh canvas on his easel, far larger than the sketchpad he’d been using during their warm-ups. Sylvain can only see the strands of his bun peeking out from the top edge. 

“Would you mind…” Felix clears his throat nervously as he moves around the corner to look at Sylvain. “Would you, uh, be alright with doing the next pose nude?” His cheeks blush that pretty pink again as he asks, the question clearly putting him a little bit on edge. 

“Yeah, of course. However you want me.”

Sylvain realizes a second too late that of all the possible ways he could have phrased it, that probably wasn’t the best one. Connotations and innuendos rip through his mind, and his tongue fumbles for a hasty apology, but it’s too late, because Felix’s blush is rising high on his cheekbones, spreading to the tips of his ears as he quickly averts his eyes from Sylvain’s. Shit.

“The washroom is just through there. To change,” Felix replies quietly, still burning a furious shade of red as Sylvain moves out of the studio and through the second set of French doors that lead into Felix’s bedroom and the adjoining washroom, snagging the robe he’d left folded up with his sweater on the way.

He’s jittery as he strips off his socks and jeans and underwear until he’s completely bare in Felix’s tiny bathroom – hands a little shaky, pulse a little quick. It’s been awhile since he’s gotten so vulnerable so quickly in front of a stranger. Something about this feels so different from all the other times he’s stripped himself down for another. For once, it’s not to fuck or be fucked, not to give a part of himself away to someone else, but it’s just to simply _be._

Sylvain reminds himself that it’s a job, nothing more, nothing less. Just because Felix is quite possibly the most beautiful man he’s ever met doesn’t change that fact. And if he gives himself a tiny pep talk in the mirror, trying to channel Claude’s charisma and Dorothea’s confidence, then, well – Felix doesn’t need to know that.

He’s only a little shaky as he exits the bathroom, the robe’s belt tied in a loose bow around his waist. Neither of them speak when he lets the robe pool off his shoulders and into his arms, folding it into a neat little square before setting it down on the sofa. 

This time, Felix directs him. Sylvain lets himself be guided by his touch, becoming pliant under Felix’s fingertips: letting him tweak the angle of his wrists, pivot his neck, turn his ankles out. His touches are fleeting and professional, only applying the tiniest hint of pressure as Sylvain adjusts compliantly beneath him.

It’s more intimate than he bargained for. Sylvain finds himself desperately trying to think of something other than the way Felix’s eyelashes fan out, casting shadows across his cheeks in the afternoon light; the way Felix moves gracefully around him, arranging each limb in the perfect position. He wills away every rush of blood south with a combination of stern self-control and thoughts of mundane tasks from work: scraping beeswax off of canvas, prying the staples from an old gilded frame, repairing a too-stretched piece of linen.

Sylvain has always been good at following directions – not counting the day in college he decided he was done playing by the rules and broke free from his family’s expectations – and it turns out modeling isn’t too different. There’s a visceral part of him, buried deep down, that craves so badly to be good at this; to be what Felix needs, even if it’s just his muse for the day, a pretty body in front of his canvas.

The pose Felix puts him in isn’t exactly comfortable, but, Sylvain supposes, it could be worse: one leg outstretched, the other propped up on the low rung of the stool, his shoulders hunched, elbows perched on his lap, chin resting on the back of his wrist. Felix takes a step back from adjusting the angle of his ankle, eyes scrutinizing Sylvain from the top of his head to his toes, and he does his best to suppress the full-body shiver that runs through him.

“I’m going to set this for twenty minutes. Just let me know if you need a break before then.” 

Sylvain doesn’t want to break the pose, so he just gives a little smile and wink to Felix, more confident than he feels, barely moving his head in a nod. “Sounds good.”

Two minutes in, his cheeks stop burning and the full-body blush spread across his chest fades to a low, comfortable burn. Five minutes in, his muscles begin to burn, unused to holding a pose for so long. He struggles not to fidget, willing his body to relax. Ten minutes in, Sylvain makes a mental note to start joining Claude on his morning runs every other morning, because _shit,_ he might actually be a little out of shape.

Fifteen minutes pass, and Sylvain’s focus eventually shifts from himself to Felix. He’s completely absorbed in his work, his gaze sharp as daggers as it flicks up to Sylvain and back down to the canvas over and over again, barely pausing between pencil strokes. The scratch of graphite, rough and jagged, fills the air between them as Felix’s eyes work their way across Sylvain’s naked body, carefully cataloguing every freckle and dimple and mole, committing them to memory. 

Even though this isn’t for him, or even really _about_ him, Sylvain swears he’s never felt more beautiful than he does now: laid bare, his guard down and his chin up, pinned by the softened amber of Felix’s eyes, immortalized in blurry strokes of bleeding copper and cadmium on canvas.

_And god, you’re so pretty, your smile’s unforgiving, I’ll place it where nobody can find_  
_I’ll play all your favorite songs and shake when the lights go off, I’ll hide us in the warm light_ _  
Oh, I think you’re alright_

–

“Fe-Fe!”

A wild tangle of black hair crashes into Felix’s knees, the high-pitched squeal of laughter loud in his ear as he hoists his niece up. Max loops her arms around his neck, bony little elbows cushioned by her puffy winter coat trimmed with fur. She smacks a big, wet kiss on the middle of his cheek.

When Felix readjusts her against his hip, he fumbles a little. He walks back the way she came, towards the dark outline of Glenn slouched on a bench near the playground. “Damn, Max, you’re almost too big for this.” 

She giggles, her palm coming to rest on the top of Felix’s head, twirling the loose end of his braid in her hand. “Papa says no swearing.” 

“ _Psh._ Like your papa never swears.” Felix smirks and taps the tip of Max’s nose, bright red in the cold autumn air, with a gloved finger. She laughs back, full-bellied and genuine, batting his hand away with her own.

The park is mostly empty, only the most bundled-up Montrealers venturing outside in the weather. Last week a cold front had moved in, and although the skies had been a clear, robin’s egg blue, today a low mass of clouds had started to move over the city slowly, threatening snow at any minute. Felix had always hated the cold, wrapping himself in layer after layer to keep himself from shivering the moment he stepped out of his apartment, but Max has plenty of energy to burn. When Glenn suggested Parc La Fontaine, Felix begrudgingly accepted, not wanting to miss his weekly date with his niece over some cold weather.

Max hums something nonsensical and sweet into his ear as she clings to the shoulders of Felix’s coat. It reminds him of Sylvain, how four days ago during their last session Felix had emerged from the washroom to find him singing, a soft baritone warm in his kitchen, as he refilled each of their water glasses from the tap - _sunflower in the morning, standing in the garden, all before you wake_ \- leaving the faint scent of clean laundry and pine needles and orange peels in his wake.

A sharp tug to his braid turns Felix’s head towards Max, a frown creasing her little face. She’s the spitting image of Glenn: quick to smile, quick to laugh, quick to anger, flashing and sparkling through this dull world like a shooting star. “Can you braid my hair, Fe-Fe? Like yours?”

Annette had come over last night to split takeout and a bottle of wine and watch some cheesy musical she’d been bugging him to watch with her for months now _(c’mon, ‘Lix, it’s about a bunch of women getting revenge and killing their awful husbands, you’re gonna_ love _it!)_. It had ended with them sprawled across his couch, Annie weaving his hair back into a long fishtail braid while Felix touched up the chipped polish on his thumb nail. (The songs had actually been pretty catchy, but he’ll never admit that to Annette). 

“Annie did it, you’ll have to ask her.”

“Aaaaaw.” Max pushes her lower lip out, the perfect exaggerated pout she _knows_ can and does melt Felix’s heart into a puddle. Felix squeezes her closer, plants a peck on her forehead. 

“I’ll ask her to come with next week, sound good?” Max nods back, satisfied. “We’re here to play, anyway. Wanna show me how fast you can get through the obstacle course?”

Max squirms out of his arms with surprising strength and dashes off to the play structure in a flurry of dark hair. Glenn just smiles lazily over at him from his spot on the bench. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Felix pulls his hood up snug around the edges of his face, burrowing into the warmth there. “I always forget how much energy she has.”

Glenn smiles, easy and wide, and shrugs. “More and more every day.” 

They sit together on the bench, quiet for a handful of minutes, their breaths puffing out into ethereal little clouds around them. Max darts around the playground, quick as the flighty little sparrows that flit from branch to branch overhead. It’s peaceful in the watery morning light, watching Max burn brighter than the sun. Here, like this, Felix can almost forget how awful this past year has been for all of them.

When Glenn flicks his eyes to Felix, there’s a sharp glimmer of mirth there. “So I heard you found a model for the exhibit.”

Felix rolls his eyes and huffs out an annoyed laugh. “Been talking about me with Ingrid?”

Glenn just shrugs, impossibly laidback. “She volunteered to babysit Max last week. She said you’ve been all holed up in your flat, painting like mad.”

“We’ve only had two sessions,” Felix mutters, blowing a stray piece of hair from his face. He fumbles for his lighter in his coat pocket, lighting up a cigarette with fumbling gloved hands. Glenn reaches for one without asking.

“So, who is it? Ferdie?”

Really, thank fuck Felix remembered to grab a new pack at the corner store this morning, because he knows he’ll need it to get through this conversation. Ever since the car accident earlier that year, Glenn had been around more often – checking in on him, asking him to help watch Max, even swinging by for a few movie nights with Ingrid and Annette and Ashe. Felix loves his brother to death, but his constant quiet stressing over Felix’s _happiness,_ of all things, has begun to grate on his nerves.

“God, Gee, I told you. We haven’t been together in like, two years.” 

If they could have ever been considered _together_ in the first place – Ferdinand had been his pre-assigned roommate freshman year, and they’d grown slowly into unlikely friends into even more unlikely… definitely not lovers, maybe friends with benefits at best. It had been fun enough, but Felix could never get rid of a tiny nagging feeling whenever he was with Ferdinand, one that reminded him too much of the version of himself he’d left behind back in Virginia. 

Felix sucks in a mouthful of smoke, fans it away through the corner of his mouth. “I hired a grad student to do it.”

As steady as Felix tries to keep his tone, Glenn knows him better than anyone. His smile widens into an insufferably smug smirk, eyes catching the blush creeping high up Felix’s neck from the edge of his scarf.

“Good fit?” Glenn asks. The bastard.

Felix clears his throat, eyes flicking away from his brother’s intent gaze over towards Max. She’s climbing to the top of the play structure, legs swinging wildly in the air. 

His mind immediately goes to Sylvain, a ball of sunlight and energy personified, waltzing into his life like he’d belonged there all along. With no prior modeling experience, he wasn’t exactly the obvious choice, or even a very logical one, but something about Sylvain had reeled Felix into his orbit, hook, line, and sinker.

Sylvain had been undeterred by Felix’s near-constant scowl, meeting it not with put-off stares or shifted eyes, but with his easy smile and laugh: all straight teeth and freckles, chuckling loudly in Felix’s quiet apartment, wide grins given out freely whenever Felix wrinkled his nose or raised his brow at him skeptically. Nine times out of ten, people chalked him up as _too surly, too standoffish, too sarcastic._ Sylvain, for whatever reason, had taken it as his own personal challenge to look beyond all that. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” And because it’s his brother, the one person Felix has never been able to keep so much of a hint of a secret from, the rest comes tumbling out, rushed and embarrassed. “He’s. Uh. Very handsome.”

Glenn gives a sharp bark of a laugh, grinning like mad. Even though the days of their youth, tussling over every little disagreement, are over, Felix resists the urge to lean over and swing a friendly, embarrassed punch at Glenn’s arm. 

“Shut up.” Felix’s cheeks burn even as he watches Max perk up at the sound.

“Oooh, someone’s got a _cruuu-ush,"_ Glenn drawls out. Much to Felix’s horror, Max returns just in time to hear. She immediately crawls up on the bench between him and Glenn. Each of her hands find Glenn’s and Felix’s, linking them together in a little chain as she asks, innocent and clear as a bell:

“Fe-Fe, what’s a crush?” 

Felix immediately realizes that there’s no way Glenn is going to help him get out of this one. His mind, traitorous as ever, immediately goes to Sylvain: Sylvain, delighting over his taste in music, flipping through the little bin of vinyl in the corner of Felix’s apartment; Sylvain, in that damn white cotton t-shirt he wears under all his sweaters, his impossibly, stupidly cute hair disheveled and sticking in every possible direction; Sylvain, and the bony slope of his ankles and the curved muscles of his thighs and the soft thatch of trimmed curls, golden-red like the rest of him, impossibly tan in the Montreal winter.

He thinks of how unfairly stunning Sylvain looked during their second and most recent session, the morning Felix said _I want you in the kitchen today,_ so there he’d sat, perched on the kitchen counter, a vision of a lover just woken from sleep, half-clothed in a rumpled white button-up, the collar pushed down his shoulder, cradling a mug of coffee in gentle hands. 

That last session couldn’t have gone more differently than the first – instead of reverent silence, they’d lost track of time as Sylvain sat in front of his easel, talking about everything and nothing for six hours straight:

Sylvain’s job at the University – his coworker Lin, the Inness piece he was working on, the tedious process of resealing a repaired piece of art. Sylvain’s friends – Claude, his roommate and best friend for years; Dorothea, his confidant and voice of reason; Hilda, sweet and sour and too smart for her own good. Sylvain’s whippet, Goose – perpetually shivering and almost always wearing a little sweater, adopted from the same animal shelter where Felix had found Trout. 

They talked about Felix’s life, too – Glenn and Max, of course, but Annie and Ingrid too. Sylvain had delighted in the details of their weekly movie nights and Felix’s regular dates with Max, taking her to museums and movies and all the newest ice cream shops. 

They’d taken turns sharing the artists they’ve had on repeat recently and their favorite songs of all time ( _Purple Heather_ for Felix, _Silver Spring_ for Sylvain). They’d talked art, both classical and modern, their favorites of each medium, from oil paint to photography and everything in between.

They’d both danced around the subject of their parents like experts, glossing over the details of their pasts in lieu of discussing things like: what book they’d bring to a desert island (Felix had thought this question was particularly stupid, but had humored Sylvain anyway with his answer of _Nineteen Eighty-Four)_ , their least favorite professors _(fuck Seteth’s lectures,_ Sylvain had exclaimed so vehemently that Felix had nearly smudged his nose right across the canvas in a fit of laughter that made his sides ache), and their favorite foods (Sylvain’s smile was nearly blinding in its brightness when Felix had told him that he’d get along great with Max after confessing to having a huge soft spot for ice cream). 

The session had been, somehow, better than the first, filling Felix with an impossibly indescribable joy, even if he’d barely gotten any painting done, distracted by the sound of Sylvain’s sweet voice and the flutter of his lashes against freckled cheeks, backlit by the waning winter sun flooding through the windows.

An annoyed little tug on his hand catapults Felix back into reality.

“Fe-Fe?”

He looks down to see Max pouting at him. Glenn is still smirking.

“It’s when… It’s when a person has… special feelings for someone.” Felix stumbles through and leaves it at that, hoping that it’ll serve as enough of an explanation for a curious six-year-old. 

Max’s face immediately lights up in understanding, turning to Glenn. “Oh, like Papa and Holst!”

 _Who?_ Felix mouths at Glenn over Max’s head, raising an eyebrow at his brother. The smirk quickly slides off his face, replaced with a sheepish expression as he looks pointedly away from where Felix sits, staring at him.

His brother hasn’t dated (seriously or casually) since he’d lived in New York nearly seven years ago, when the only frame of reference he’d had for a healthy relationship was a scornful, spiteful boyfriend, estranged from his family and for good reason, too. Felix had disliked Miklan from the start, and it had only taken him a few trips up into the city for that dislike to morph into barely-contained rage for the man responsible for turning his brother into a broken, angry thing.

Max had turned everyone’s life upside down, but Glenn’s most of all – a single father formed from a casual fling, taking on an entirely new set of responsibilities with such grace. Felix can’t help but be a little proud whenever he thinks about it.

“Can we get ice cream now?” 

Of course Max breaks the tension in the way that only six-year-olds can, oblivious and charming in her innocence. Felix and Glenn let out twin laughs, and she looks between the two with a confused expression on her face.

“Sure, Max.”

They leave the park together, Max perched on her dad’s shoulders, one hand resting lightly on the top of Felix’s head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, i owe [levi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviicorpus), [cha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akhikosanada/), and [isaac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redeyedwrath/) my entire life for being the best betas i could ask for and listening to me scream for hours about this!!!
> 
> check out the updated [fic playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0bQCzH8x9ZKZeuZ3FchI5E?si=VXY60jSuTC-uHjFXNNrmuw) here! the middle section (songs 11-21ish) roughly corresponds to this chapter, while the last third gives ya a lil peek of the mood for chapter 3 (:
> 
> pleeeeeaaaase scream at me on twitter about this – [@cherryconke](https://twitter.com/cherryconke)!


	3. patience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! okay. so. this chapter was an absolute monster to write (nearly the same length as chapters 1+2 combined) and each of the scenes just kind of spiraled out of control so here's 13k of mutual pining i guess!!!
> 
> big thank you to [levi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviicorpus), [cha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akhikosanada), and [isaac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redeyedwrath) for beta-ing. thx loves <3

_Catch a wave and take in the sweetness_ _  
__You want this, you need this_ _  
__Are you ready for it?_ _  
__Are you ready for it?_ _  
__Are you ready for it?_

—

Five days after their second session, Felix hears from Sylvain again in the form of an accidental text, waking him bright and early on Thursday morning.

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__Attachment: IMG-3017.jpg_ _  
__Sent 7:34am_

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__oops, pocket text… my bad_ 😛 _  
__Sent 7:36am_

How exactly one manages to send an accidental text at the crack of dawn, Felix has no idea, but for some reason it feels distinctly _Sylvain_. He rolls over in bed (much to Trout’s chagrin), squinting against the morning sun filtering in through the windows to blink down at his phone, pixelated colors and shapes made fuzzy by sleep.

A photo of a small, lanky dog, wrapped in a canine version of a down jacket and matching maroon scarf, looks away from the camera in what Felix can only begin to describe as a pout. The shrubbery-lined sidewalk on the edge of a canal matches the morning light outside of Felix’s window. 

Felix glances over to Trout, who’s resettled on the pillow opposite his. Deep, rumbly purrs vibrate across the mattress when Felix scratches between his ears, finally pulling away to tap out, delete, then retype a response. 

_[Me]:_ _  
__No worries. You’re up early._ _  
__Is that Goose?_ _  
__Nice jacket._ _  
__Sent 7:44am_

This launches a string of texts back from Sylvain, candy-coated sweetness in emojis and exclamation marks, sent like rapidfire lightning, a perfect mirror of how words tumble out of his mouth, earnest and excited. Felix studies each photo with pinched zooms: Goose, a tiny curled-up indent in the middle of a comically oversized dog bed in front of a fireplace; blurry puppy pictures; even a selfie of her long snout resting against Sylvain’s shoulder, his goofy grin outshining everything else in the frame. 

From there, the conversation flows naturally, and whenever it dies off, Sylvain always brings it back around – whether twenty minutes or ten hours later – with a photo of Goose or the Inness painting from work, or stupidly mundane little conversation-starters that bring both sharp smiles and exasperated eye-rolls to Felix’s face, things like: 

_just had a bagel that might beat fairmount AND st-viateur (impossible,_ Felix had shot back, attaching a photo of his and Ingrid’s bagels they’d shared that morning at the park, the Fairmount logo stamped clearly on the paper wrapping); 

_are marshmallows candy? i’m trying to win a bet with claude_ ( _no,_ Felix had responded, _they’re confectionary, it’s different, and anyway, they’re disgusting –_ that had turned into a long conversation with Annie that ended with Felix more confused about baking than he’d been to begin with);

 _the new exhibit at the MAC looks amazing_ (Felix had agreed, and spent all night arguing himself in circles on the pros and cons of asking Sylvain to go with him – the likelihood of it being misconstrued as a date was high, but oh god, what if he actually _wanted_ a date with Sylvain – which had ended with Felix not even replying at all and Sylvain switching topics quickly after his radio silence). 

When Sylvain’s first text of the day comes through (yes, they text every day now, no, Felix doesn’t want to think about the implications), Felix is standing in line at his favorite coffee shop on campus, tucked away in the bottom corner of the library. It’s also the busiest, especially on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of the term, filled with students recovering from last night’s hangovers, pressed for time before a whole new week of classes and assignments starts. 

_[Sylvain]:_ _  
__trying this coffee thing out today. am i doing it right?_ 😬 _  
__Attachment: IMG-3148.jpg_ _  
__Sent 10:21am_

Felix smirks down at the photo on his screen. It’s a giant frappuccino, decked out with a mountain of whipped cream, chocolate sprinkles, and an obscene amount of caramel drizzle. Just the sight of it makes Felix’s stomach hurt. 

_[Me]:_ _  
__Absolutely not._ _  
__Sent 10:22am_

Felix squints closer after sending his reply. The label on the plastic cup almost looks like...

 _[Me]:_ _  
__Are you on campus?_ _  
__Sent 10:24am_

“Large drip for Felix, to go!”

Felix’s head snaps from staring at his phone up towards the bar, where he immediately catches the gaze of twin hazel pools, a flash of amber in viridian, from across the room. 

He feels like he’s moving on autopilot, swimming underwater as he collects his coffee from the counter and steers himself towards Sylvain, who’s sitting sprawled at a little two-top, long arms stretched out across the table. He looks, as always, stupid-handsome in his winter wear, a maroon woolen coat with the collar pulled up over dark denim and leather boots, a thick scarf folded neatly over one arm and the exact frappuccino Felix had been looking at on his phone on the table in front of him. 

Sylvain doesn’t look one bit bothered by seeing him here in public, like they’d planned this all along and it isn’t just a chaotic coincidence that, of all places to be on a Sunday at 10:26 in the morning, they both gravitated here, their paths crossing to collide in some weird, lucky chance of fate. He grins lazily up at Felix, the curl of dark lashes catching in the light and dust motes of the library.

“Fancy seeing you here.” 

Sylvain punctuates his smile with a wink, and Felix has to sternly remind himself that in the short time they’ve known each other, he’s seen Sylvain flirt with just about everyone: the barista at the café down the street they started running down to during breaks to re-fuel on caffeine; the cashier at the deli they picked up sandwiches from after a particularly long session; hell, Felix thought he even caught him winking at _Trout_ the other day. 

Felix firmly repeats _it doesn’t mean anything_ to himself and conceals the butterflies in his stomach by smirking back, all teeth, savoring the near-scalding burn his own drink gives him as he sips it. 

“That can barely be considered coffee, you know.”

Felix hates the way Sylvain’s pout makes him feel: light and airy, as if there’s nothing tethering him to Earth except the way his lower lip pushes out, rosy and chapped from the winter wind. The corners of his eyes crinkle up in delicate lines, and it makes Felix feel like they’re sharing a secret, an inside joke that exists solely in the space between their bodies.

“Oh, but it tastes _so_ good – do you want to try?”

Sylvain offers it out, the straw tilted haphazardly towards him, stuck with bits of whipped cream and sprinkles. Felix flicks his gaze between the sugary drink and Sylvain’s face, earnestly beaming up at him. Despite himself, he takes the bait, but immediately pulls a face at the first (and last) syrupy sweet sip, his lips pursing as he pushes the cup back towards Sylvain, who’s laughing almost outrageously loudly, a bright flush painted high across his cheeks at Felix’s reaction.

It’s odd, these rare moments when Felix gets to experience Sylvain outside of the safe haven of his apartment. He feels a little too loud, his personality too brilliant and big for public, outshining everyone and everything around him. Felix finds himself missing their sessions in his studio, where Sylvain is all his: wrapped up in his soft cotton robe and Felix’s starry-eyed gaze, laughing and joking and smiling, belonging only to him for a handful of hazy, daydreamy hours.

“So, where are you headed?”

Felix sips his coffee – still scalding – and hoists the strap of the canvas portfolio bag he lugged all the way to campus up a little higher on his shoulder. “Storage. I have a few finished pieces I want to get wrapped up and put away.”

He’s never liked keeping too many finished paintings in his living space – he’ll _never_ let Ferdie forget how he spilled tea all over one of the portraits he’d spent thirty painstaking hours on for freshman year finals – and anyway, there simply isn’t enough room in his tiny studio. Not to mention his bad habit of staying up too late every so often and trying to “improve” finished paintings, despite that never, _ever_ being a good idea. 

Sylvain smiles back. “Mind if I walk with you? I’m on my way back to the lab right now.”

All the departments within the College of Art share the same old brick building, a winding maze of modern additions piecemealed onto the last, getting progressively newer and nicer up until last year’s project, a state-of-the-art darkroom. Felix thinks the restoration lab is in the older, original part of the building, which would mean Sylvain’s going his way anyway. 

“Sure.” 

Sylvain holds the door for him on their way out of the cozy, compact warmth of the café and into the crystalline air, crisp and clean. It’s not snowing, but their breaths still puff up in billowy clouds around them as they cross the salted brick square. A particularly strong gust of wind cuts through the gap between Felix’s collar and chin, bringing on a sharp, involuntary shiver.

“ _Fuck,_ it’s freezing.” 

Sylvain looks surprisingly comfortable and at home in the cold weather – he’s not wearing gloves, and despite clutching that stupid drink, he’s not shivering or reaching for the scarf hung over his arm. He stops mid-stride, half turns to Felix with his brows creasing to meet in the middle. 

“Wait, where’s that giant scarf of yours? I knew something was different.”

Felix rolls his eyes, trying to fight off the way his shoulders twitch at the breeze that skirts through the courtyard; the implication that Sylvain had _noticed_ something as insignificant as him missing his scarf sets off weird little sparks of hopefulness between his ears. 

“I left it at my friend Annie’s house last night.” She demanded he come over and try her “newly perfected” ginger snap recipe – one of his favorites, they were never too sweet – before this week’s dinner-and-movie night. Felix remembers leaving it draped over the back of her sofa, but it’s probably been torn to shreds by her roommate Lysithea’s cat by now.

“Hold on, let me trade you–”

Before Felix realizes what’s happening, Sylvain has plucked the portfolio bag from his shoulder and unfolded his scarf to drape around Felix’s neck. “There, that’s better.”

Felix can feel his cheeks flashing a hot shade of crimson, but he can’t bring himself to protest much, not when the soft cashmere smells just like Sylvain, citrus and vaguely chemical, like oil paint and solvent – it reminds him of afternoons spent dappling cobalt and ochre onto the edges of his shoulders; of the orange groves back home, the sweet tartness of peeled rinds and humid air and rich, loamy soil.

“Ah, um– are you sure?” Felix asks, even as his hands come up to secure the ends of the scarf around the lower half of his face, shielding his neck from the sharp, cutting breeze whipping through the square. It’s still warm from Sylvain’s body heat, soft and comforting in a way Felix hadn’t expected.

“Yeah.” Sylvain winks and Felix tries to ignore the squirming in his stomach, reminds his heart to listen to his head. “I run warm.”

Felix eyes the portfolio bag now slung over Sylvain’s shoulder. It isn’t almost-dragging on the ground anymore, only coming down to Sylvain’s knee, but he’s handling it gently, not letting the canvas frames inside jostle too much as they walk.

“Just… be careful.”

The smile Sylvain gives him sparkles in the winter sun, reassuring and warm like the bitter burn of coffee in his mouth and Sylvain’s scarf wrapped around his neck. “Of course.”

They stick to the well-groomed pathways of brick winding through courtyards and lawns, all blanketed in a light dusting of snow. The first time Felix walked through campus, just a few days after moving to Montreal, he fell in love with it immediately, the peaked archways and faded white bricks stark against the blue summer skyline. It’s no less beautiful now, maybe even more so, having spent the last four years slowly making it his home – even if he is absolutely freezing for half the year.

“So, do you think I could see some of your finished pieces in person?” Sylvain’s tone is hopefully curious, genuine in a way that makes Felix’s heart skip a couple of beats.

“Hmm, sure. I need to store all of these, anyway. But only if you show me around the restoration lab. I’ve never been inside.”

The grin Sylvain breaks into makes Felix feel like he’s just swallowed sunshine.

“Deal.”

—

Sylvain swipes his keycard at the door and lets Felix in first.

The lab takes up a good chunk of the first floor of the art building, sunken down a few brick steps with high, huge windows lining an entire wall. Paintings in various states of disrepair line every wall except the back corner, which is occupied by an office the size of a closet, the door left ajar to expose a violently messy desk, papers overflowing and spilling out onto the rickety rolling chair. Like most rooms in the art building, there’s paint everywhere, newer spills layered upon drips decades-old, and about half the room seems to be devoted simply to _storage:_ rolling carts of tools, everything from the familiar (plenty of paintbrushes) to the unknown (little metal… scrapers?) stacked atop them; reams of canvas, new and old, cubbyholed up high with a wooden ladder leaning nearby; skinny shelves of paper and paintings alike.

“Okay, so, don’t touch anything.”

Felix snorts softly and rolls his eyes. He may not have been in this particular lab before, but he has enough common sense to know something _that_ obvious. “I know.”

Sylvain sets the portfolio bag down to lean carefully against a cabinet, unbuttoning his coat and reaching out to take Felix’s own jacket and scarf – the room is almost stiflingly warm, and has an acrid smell of oil paint and various chemicals that stings the inside of his nose. Under his coat, Sylvain’s wearing a cream-coloured, cable-knit sweater, looking (as always) like he just walked off the set of a photoshoot.

The lab is empty save for a lanky man hunched over on a stool, his face mere centimeters away from the surface of the painting he’s currently working on with a fine, pointed silver instrument that looks vaguely like some sort of… tweezer. His hair, a dark green in the fluorescent light, is piled up in a messy bun on the top of his head. 

“Sylvain,” he calls out without bothering to look up, “put the kettle on, would you?”

He sounds a little tired and very bored, and his voice low and almost musical in its floatiness. Sylvain laughs, fingertips resting lightly on Felix’s shoulder blade as he guides him further into the room.

“I brought a friend, Linny!”

“Oh.”

The green-haired man – Linhardt, Felix guesses, the one coworker he’s heard Sylvain mention before – looks up, blinking blearily at both of them. His expression is vaguely sleepy, dreamy gaze half-lidded as he gives a languid wave to Felix before covering his mouth in a wide yawn. “S-sorry. You must be Felix.”

Nice, skipping the perfunctory _hello_ s and _how-do-you-do_ s. Felix immediately decides he likes Linhardt.

“Yeah, uh–”

“How did I know?” Linhardt smiles, all smug. “Oh, Sylvain just _won’t_ stop talking about you, his _artist.”_ There’s a small, teasing smile on his face and Felix follows his catlike gaze towards Sylvain, sheepishly ruffling his fingers through his hair, blush growing redder with each word Linhardt says. “It’s getting _quite_ annoying, to be completely hones–”

“Okay, Lin, thank you _so_ much for that,” Sylvain cuts in, smiling around his obvious discomfort. Felix realizes then and there that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Sylvain – perpetually smooth, flirty, on-top-of-the-world Sylvain – flustered. Somehow, impossibly, it’s a good look on him. Felix catches him mouthing _sorry_ over at him, and he struggles not to laugh as he turns back to Linhardt.

“Nice to meet you.”

“C’mon, let me give you the grand tour.” Sylvain’s hand is back on his shoulders, guiding him past Linhardt’s work table – Felix takes a peek as they walk by: it looks like he’s going through, inch by inch, removing dirt and grime and dust from the surface – and deeper into the lab. His hand on his back reminds Felix of their last session, when Sylvain had hugged him goodbye (and Felix _definitely_ hadn’t thought of it for the rest of the night). 

“The backlog is over there–” Sylvain gestures towards a ceiling-to-floor set of shelves, each cubbyhole filled with a canvas or a frame, marked and labeled neatly with a little color-coded tag. “These are all the pieces that have been sent to us for touch-ups, or cleanings – we do those all the time for museums or other universities. Full-on restorations like Inness are a little rarer.”

Felix nods, content to listen quietly. Sylvain’s voice is smooth and calming – he’s clearly in his element as he describes tools and points out different works-in-progress scattered around. Felix isn’t sure why he’s surprised; maybe he’s too used to Sylvain cracking dumb jokes and making him laugh and flirting with his cat. Regardless, this passionate, knowledgeable side slips a little further past the cracks in Felix’s armor, almost immediately charmed.

“We aren’t as fancy as other labs, but we still do material sample analysis here–” Sylvain points out a little desk lined with glass jars of clear solution, cotton swabs, and a box full of what look like some kind of testing strips, “–to figure out what’s in the paint.”

“How long have you worked here?” Felix asks, idly flicking his tongue between his teeth, piercings clicking familiarly against enamel.

“I did a work-study here during undergrad. Hanneman liked me, so I got a full offer to stay on during grad school.” Sylvain shrugs, all careful nonchalance. “The pay isn’t great, but I get to set my own hours. And even though he’s on his worst behavior today–“ he smirks and rolls his eyes towards Linhardt, “–Lin’s fun to work with.”

“I heard that,” Linhardt calls, monotone, from across the room. Sylvain just laughs, full-bodied and so genuine it makes Felix smile back.

“Alright, I saved the best for last – wanna see the Inness?”

“Yeah.” Felix barely has time to breathe before he’s caught up in the infectious presence of Sylvain, tugging the cuff of his turtleneck sleeve along a narrow aisle between two towering floor-to-ceiling cabinets. It smells like dust and paint, and they emerge out on the other side to a small table draped with a large sheet of fabric. The fluorescents are dim back here, casting everything in a hazy, low light. 

“Here she is.” 

Sylvain flicks on the overhead lamp, pulls the dust cloth off gently, near-reverently, and all Felix can say is _oh,_ because it’s gorgeous – a soft landscape painted in muted yellows and blues, a crimson sun hanging blurry and low in the sky. The piece is huge – it takes up almost the whole table – and shows obvious signs of being in the repair process: frayed canvas edges escape any sort of true frame, instead stretched out on a basic wood structure; the edges of one corner bear small marks of a few different varnishes and appliqués. Felix hovers over it, knows he’s not supposed to touch but the whole thing is so tactile, rough-worn criss-crossed canvas coated in thick strokes of paint. It feels ancient, a relic of a different time, when landscapes like this were done _en plein air,_ the hum of bees and butterfly-kisses heavy under the late summer sun. 

“Gorgeous, right?”

Sylvain’s talking about the painting, but all Felix can focus on is the expression on his face as he looks down at it, joyful and quietly proud. His freckles almost glow under the lamplight; they remind Felix of his favorite constellations, the chaotic paths Max traced in the sky with her finger for him and Glenn during their camping trip last summer.

 _(I think that’s Jupiter,_ Felix guessed, squinting up through the flicker of fireflies, fuzzy in the edges of his vision. _Nooo, Fe-Fe, that’s a frog,_ Max insisted, grabbing his hand in her own, small and sticky with melted marshmallow goo, leftover from the fire they’d stoked earlier that night. _Look, I’ll show you–)_

“We still have a couple of weeks left, but it’ll be worth it once we get her all fixed up.”

Felix studies the painting for a few more moments, getting temporarily lost in the soft, blurred lines and the masterful depiction of depth between the willow trees in the fore- and backgrounds, marigold yellow mixing with mossy green, delicate but sure, confident strokes. It’s beautiful in the way most impressionist paintings are, hazily nebulous like a distant dream; lovely in the shapes and movement, in how the light kisses up against the shadows and the brush strokes aren’t perfectly blended but exposed, not a perfect, seamless depiction of reality but a shimmering mirage, memories formed in the half-light moonglow.

“... your portfolio? Hello? Hey, Felix? You in there?”

Felix snaps his gaze up to Sylvain, eyes focusing on the slightly confused smile, big and bright. He’s closer now, a warm hand resting lightly on Felix’s arm, grounding him back to reality.

“Yeah, sorry. Spaced out a bit.” Concern smooths out to something vaguely fond before Sylvain moves to drape the dust cloth back over the table. Felix watches, the vague feeling that he’s just in the way echoing emptily through him. 

“Are you sure you don’t need to get back to work?”

Sylvain tosses him a smile and a wink over his shoulder as they wind back through the twisted maze of shelves and canvas. “Nah. I’ll be in tomorrow. But if you could wait just two seconds, I could clean up real quick–”

“Yeah, of course.”

Sylvain settles him on a stool pulled in front of a table stacked high with deteriorating frames. He moves off to put away some of the tools on the table Linhardt’s hunched over (not before double- and triple-checking Felix didn’t need water, or a cup of tea), bundling various brushes together.

Sylvain is methodical, neatly tidying as he goes. Felix watches him under the pretense of sipping his coffee and scrolling through his phone, eyes flicking up to catch Sylvain, brilliant in the threads of morning light that trickle in from the windows, russet hair flickering gold and crimson, a quiet, focused expression on his face as he finishes picking everything up and moves away towards the sink.

“I wasn’t exaggerating when I said he hasn’t stopped talking about you, you know.” 

Linhardt’s sleepy voice snaps Felix’s gaze to the man himself, all tired eyes and messy hair, wearing a frayed apron covered in paint splatters and ink stains. Felix does his best to fight down the smile spreading on his face, biting the inside of his lip instead. Traitorously nervous hands skirt up to tuck a stray hair behind his ear, forcing his words to come out steadier than he feels.

“Really? What does he say?”

Linhardt’s smile turns coy. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Felix stares back blankly, unsure what he could even _mean_ by that. “What?”

Linhardt rolls his eyes and bends back down to the painting, chipping away at the surface of the painting with delicate, tiny little strokes. “Come on. Have you seen the way he looks at you?”

Felix can feel the heat from a scarlet blush unfurl across his cheeks, looking away from Linhardt’s steady gaze even as his stomach swings between nervousness and weird, queasy delight. Felix quickly decides to play it off as _dumb,_ as well as he can, anyway – he doesn’t exactly want to have this conversation with a coworker of Sylvain’s who he met less than five minutes ago.

“What do you mean–”

Sylvain, miraculously, saves him by walking in at just the right moment. His hands are no longer filled with brushes, but carefully balancing a steaming mug. The scent of pine fills the air as Sylvain sets it down with a flourish on a little rolling cart by Linhardt’s leg. 

“A cup for sleeping beauty–”

Felix represses a snort.

“I _told_ you not to call me that, Sylvai–”

Sylvain just smiles and cuts him off, looking back over to Felix. “I’m just kidding, Lin. Ready, Felix?”

Felix nods and follows Sylvain out, but not before shooting one last look at Linhardt as they leave, who just returns Felix’s look with equal parts bemusement and boredom as he turns back to his work.

They take the stairs side-by-side, Sylvain taking care not to bang the bottom of the portfolio bag on the ground as they walk. Light filters down through the high stairwell windows, shadows dancing luminescent patterns through Sylvain’s hair, carmine copper in the mid-winter sun. The uneasy feeling, deep in Felix’s gut, returns again – doesn’t Sylvain have something better to be doing than carry his school projects around? 

“So, what’s in here?” Sylvain gestures to the bag, that ever-present smile quirking itself onto his face, accompanied with a playful waggle of his eyebrows. It’s stupid, how cute he looks doing that. “Any of me?” 

Three sessions in, Sylvain had yet to actually see any progress on the painting. When Felix had asked if he wanted to, he’d just shrugged, said _I think I’ll wait until it’s finished,_ and gone back to regaling him with a colorful story about some antic or another he and Claude had gotten into during their undergrad years, his silhouette cutting sharp shapes against the backlit glow of the apartment window.

Sylvain was full of these sorts of stories, content to fill the silence as Felix painted, half-listening, half-tuning him out, slowly filling in the gaps and spaces of his body with colors and shapes. His voice was soothing, low and sweet, dipping in and out of joy and melancholy, vulnerability and laughter twined together in shimmering threads as he slowly painted a picture of his life for Felix with honeyed words in dulcet tones.

It’s from these stories Felix got the impression that Sylvain used to be a bit of a bad boy, referencing a past life of partying and drinking and a _lot_ of failed dates (Felix had, unfortunately, had to furiously push down a mounting jealousy he felt whenever these were mentioned).

The little references here and there seemed to be a thing of the past, which made sense – Sylvain had given off an earnest sort of energy when they’d first met at the café, maybe not like he had his life one-hundred-percent together (who did, really?), but he was focused and level-headed, responsible enough (even though he ran ten minutes late wherever he went), kind and thoughtful (even if all his jokes were so bad they made Felix snort-laugh). 

Felix feels blinded, partly by the bright light cascading down on them, but he suspects Sylvain might have something to do with it, too. He clears his throat as they walk down the hall, digging in the front pocket of his jacket for his keys. “Nah. These are just some older things for class I finally finished up.”

Sylvain cocks his head to the side. “Which class?”

“Advanced still life. With Byleth.” 

Felix fits the key into the lock, bolt clicking and sliding home easily; pulls the door open and gestures Sylvain inside. 

The senior studio, Felix thinks, isn’t anything to write home about. Storage shelves line an entire wall, stacked high with student projects varying from _passable_ to _long-forgotten;_ easels crowd up against each other in the corner, all spindly legs and wobbly loose screws from years of overuse; paint splatters coat absolutely everything, from the floor to the walls to some stray flecks on the ceiling, put there by an overenthusiastic Pollock devotee years ago. Felix flicks the light on, the buzz of fluorescents in the high ceiling settling into a low, regular buzz.

Sylvain sets the bag down, laying it carefully on a long work table. “Oh, I’m TA-ing for one of Byleth’s 200-level classes. You would not _believe_ how many awful essays I’ve had to read through about _the plight of contemporary art in the age of Instagram_ and _why sculptures are boring.”_ Sylvain rolls his eyes at this, which earns an amused snort from Felix. He’s met plenty of art history majors in his almost-four years at university that were, to put it lightly, completely insufferable snobs (the purple-haired TA from his freshman year Baroque architecture class, Lorenz, immediately comes to mind), and he’s glad that Sylvain definitely is not one.

Felix unzips the bag and slides the first piece out carefully, flipping back the flimsy paper cover he’d put in front of it to make sure nothing smudged in transit. It’s a still life of a cutlery drawer, a quick study Felix had done to try and capture the shine of metal and chrome against dark shadows, forks overlapping in a jumbled mess of tines, a steak knife glinting in the warm candlelight of his kitchen.

“What do you think of them? Byleth, I mean. Not the essays,” Felix asks as he grabs a pile of balled-up cloth and a half-used package of archival tissue paper sitting on one of his storage shelves among a handful of loose brushes and miscellaneous sketches scattered about. He’s never been known for being the neatest in the studio; it’s a point of stubborn pride, unwilling to change after Glenn had commented one day that his messy habits reminded him of how their mom worked when she painted, a whirlwind of energy, leaving an absolute disaster in her wake every time. 

Sylvain falls into a steady rhythm with him, taking each painting Felix hands him with careful hands, his movements practiced and steady as he meticulously layers a piece of tissue paper over the sketch, making sure the edges line up snug and perfect. He shrugs, nonchalant as ever. “They’re cool. Pretty tough on the underclassmen, though. The program seems a lot more difficult now than when I went through it.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty competitive now.” He doesn’t mention the near-death experience that had been applying for the advanced Bachelor of Fine Arts program; the sleepless nights and horrible hand cramps and too-many Red Bulls crushed from afternoon to midnight that had comprised his entire junior year, frantically working towards the impossible finish line of turning in a halfway-decent portfolio he was okay with (“proud of” would be too far of a stretch, not after staring at each piece and painstakingly scrutinizing all of the mistakes he’d made for too many hours – no, he’d settle with just “okay”). 

“How many people are in your program? Twelve?”

Sylvain hands the painting back to Felix, who slides it in a plastic sleeve and sets it aside. He looks closer at the next painting Felix hands him – a color study of Trout, lounging in his favorite spot of the apartment, the bay window cushion with the sun hitting through the glass at just the right angle, blurred oranges and whites and pinks mixing into sherbert strokes just abstract enough you’d have to squint to figure out what it is. Sylvain holds it back, admiring it at a distance, creases crinkling in the corners of his eyes. “Oh, this is good.”

Felix suppresses the grimace on his face and actively works to bite back the retort his brain has defaulted to over the years, that automatic instinct to disagree _(I can do better)._ “Eight. And, uh, thanks.”

Sylvain finishes layering the paper on top of the painting, securing it with binder clips in the corner before setting it gently near Felix’s pile. He pauses, hands ruffling through his hair in that sheepish, puppy-dog habit Felix has picked up on. “You’re really good, Felix. You know that, right?” 

His gaze is somehow molten hazel but sharp as it drills into Felix, peeling back all of the walls he’s put up over the years to protect himself from this exact thing from happening. Well, maybe not this exact thing – but the fallout of the unavoidable _after,_ when Sylvain inevitably breaks his heart and Felix is left with nothing but an overwhelming amount of emotions he _knows_ he’s unequipped to deal with. Felix looks back for a moment before his eyes flit away, focusing on something, _anything_ else, settling on a particularly ugly sculpture of a killer whale left by a student long-graduated, hanging precariously from a corner of the ceiling.

“You haven’t even seen any of my paintings of you.” Felix mentally kicks himself; he doesn’t really want to be having this conversation with Sylvain, arguing about whether or not he’s _good,_ unable to simply accept the compliment and move on, his brain hard-wired to constantly cycle through all the things he should be doing better. 

“I don’t need to,” Sylvain says, as if it’s just that simple. Felix can feel the blush rising fast and hot on his cheeks as he shifts his eyes to fall back into Sylvain’s gaze where a thread of light lives, hazel chromatics threatening to pull Felix under in endless neon nights and forever freckled days. 

“Thanks.” 

They work together quietly, the room silent except for the hum of electricity and the steady rhythm of them putting away Felix’s pieces together – the clean _rip_ of each piece of tissue paper from the stack; the dry rasp of Sylvain’s broad palms smoothing it out over each painting, making sure there are no bubbles or creases; the plasticky sound when Felix slides each of them home into a separate plastic sheet, safe from the dust and dry air of winter.

It goes quickly with two sets of hands, and before Felix realizes it, the portfolio bag is empty and the stack of plastic-sheeted pieces is piled high, ready to be shelved away.

“Thanks. For helping. You didn’t have to.”

Sylvain smiles at him, for what must be the millionth time today, but it doesn’t fail to light a flame in Felix’s insides, a match striking red phosphorus and catching in white like Sylvain’s lashes in the fading afternoon light, momentarily liberating the oxygen from his lungs. 

“Happy to.”

_In the night when I feel your absence_ _  
__Like a dotted line across my shoulder_ _  
__Like a silver vision across the desert_ _  
__May no memory hold my head up_ _  
__Nor may no fantasy fold my head in_

—

“Ah, Syl, I’m sorry I’m so late!”

Dorothea brushes her lips to each of his cheeks in a whirl of curls and red lipstick, pulling him into a quick hug that smells sweet like perfume and cinnamon. 

Sylvain laughs and pats her cheek fondly. “No worries, Thea. I’ve kept myself occupied.” He gestures to the drink he’s been nursing – his favorite on days like this when he needs a little kick to warm him up – a Boulevardier with two extra twists of orange.

He hasn’t actually been waiting long at all, and even if he was, he’s content to spend hours sipping slow on cocktails, chatting with Claude over the white-gold marble bar as he shakes and stirs and whips up drink after drink, each more complicated than the last, while Sylvain watches on and keeps him company through his Sunday evening shift, perched on his favorite stool (tucked in the corner, perfect for people watching) in _La Distillerie_. 

It’s a swanky bar-restaurant hybrid, a long, narrow place tucked away in Rosemont, serving a strong speakeasy glitzy-glamour aesthetic and even stronger cocktails. Sylvain wouldn’t be able to afford a place like this if not for Claude slipping him free drinks and Dedue straight up refusing to charge him for any of the small plates (his favorite in the city – how could they not be, with Dedue as the head chef?) he orders. 

“Bonsoir, Claude!” Dorothea tosses a smile to Claude as she slips off her fur-lined winter coat and hangs it over the back of her chair. 

“Thea.” He winks back, charming as ever in a sharply-pressed white collared shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he twists a fresh orange peel over a lowball glass and tops the whole thing off with a sour maraschino cherry soaked in bourbon. “Gin and T?”

“Claude, you’re an angel.”

Sylvain had actually met Dorothea here, all those years ago – Sylvain bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, freshly moved into the dorm room paid for by his parents back before he’d been cut off from Gautier funds, ready to fuck around and have fun; Dorothea young yet world-weary, seeking romance in all the wrong places; both of them seated side-by-side in the long booth set against the back wall, each at their own intimate little two-top table lit with candles and smelling of roses and baby’s breath, sitting across from trendy brass and mauve velvet chairs left empty by each of their no-show Tinder dates.

(They’d each been three drinks in, trying not to compulsively check their phones every two minutes, when Dorothea had turned to him with carefully done-up hair and a bitter pout twisted on her lips. “Where’s your date?” as she downed the rest of her tequila-soda, grimacing only a little at the sting of watered-down alcohol. “No-show it looks like,” Sylvain responded, putting on what he thought was practiced nonchalance, but Dorothea had seen through it, had seen through _him,_ immediately. A half-baked idea, made bold by tipsiness and the desperate need to be loved, a constant undercurrent in his life: “We could remedy that, though.” He tossed her a wink and a smile, which she’d heartily laughed off, smiling wide for the first time that night. “Nice try, buddy.” 

They’d spent the rest of the evening together, drinking their sorrows and complaining about the state of, well, _everything,_ starting with the usual suspects – dating, Tinder, and people in general – and eventually moving into deeper territory –Sylvain’s parents, Dorothea’s role in an upcoming musical _(Whore #3, but the first understudy for Eponine in her theatre school’s production of Les Mis),_ both of their love lives, or lack thereof. That night they’d stayed until the bar kicked them out, and Sylvain knew right away that they’d be forever friends.)

Sylvain watches Dorothea turn to him out of the corner of his eye, quickly finishing up the text he’s sending Felix (after having spent twenty agonizing minutes workshopping it with Claude, trying to strike that perfect balance of flirty-funny he’s normally so good at – not with Felix, though; the man seemed to steal all his witty banter as soon as it formed on his lips with his half-fond, half-withering stares). He ended up copy-and-pasting a stupid meme, one from ages ago that he’s fairly sure Felix hasn’t seen it yet; despite having the newest model phone and a nice console, he seemed fairly illiterate to internet culture. Sylvain presses send, vehemently ignoring the flip-flop his stomach does as soon as the message goes through, turning his phone over face-down on a coaster.

“I think Mercie’s trying to find parking,” she says cheerfully, gratefully taking the drink from Claude’s careful hands, fizzing with effervescent bubbles that sparkle and pop over the rim, topped with two lime wedges. “Mm, Claude, you’ve outdone yourself!”

Mercedes walks in, interrupting Dorothea’s praises and Claude’s cheeky grin, snowflakes melting where they’ve caught in her hair and on the collar of her wool coat, to sweep Sylvain and then Dorothea into one of her signature, warm hugs. 

“Sylvie,” she presses a fleeting kiss to Sylvain’s cheek, who smiles back and returns the peck fondly, then moves on to Dorothea, “Thea,” and finally gives Claude a fond wave across the bar, “Claude, it’s so good to see you – it’s been ages!”

“You’re looking lovely as ever, Mercie. Let me guess… tequila soda?”

“Aw, Claude, you know me so well.” 

Mercedes settles in on the opposite side of him, Sylvain content to sip his drink and quietly listen to his two best friends catch up over their cocktails, still caught up in overthinking his text to Felix, Claude occasionally chiming in when he’s not busy taking orders and running drinks to the other end of the bar. Dorothea just got back from her tour stint with Cirque’s newest show a few nights ago, and she’s happily regaling Mercedes with tales from the road: of who hooked up with who, how they’d gotten stranded in the middle of nowhere after one of the buses inconveniently broke down, the sold-out show they’d played under the big top in Dodger Stadium. 

The last time they’d all been together was on a four-way Facetime call, Dorothea still dressed up in her over-the-top makeup and intricate ribbons laced across her arms and zig-zagging down her shoulders and back; Hilda cooing over how darling she looked in the corner of his screen; Mercedes smiling tiredly up from the pile of lesson plans she’d been poring over; Sylvain grinning fondly at all three of them with Goose settled on his lap as Dorothea excitedly told them all about how the show had gone earlier that night – _“Manuela said it’s the best performance I’ve put on so far!”_

The conversation comes to a lull when Mercedes puts two orders in for Dedue’s baked salmon puff pastries (all of their agreed-upon favorite) and finishes off her first tequila soda, setting it down on the coaster with an air of finality as she turns to Sylvain.

“Sylvie, you’ve been so quiet.” 

“Yeah, you _have_ to tell us _everything,”_ Dorothea chimes in, her stare surprisingly sharp as it narrows in on him.

Sylvain smiles sheepishly, restrains himself from picking up his phone to see if Felix has responded yet (even though he knows he hasn’t, hasn’t felt the telltale buzz of the notification against the bar top). “What do you mean, everything?”

Both women scoff in unison at him, Dorothea rolling her eyes as she sucks down the rest of her drink, a sarcastic, “What do you _think_ we mean? Your _artist._ ” At the same time Mercedes gently chides him with, “Sylvain Gautier, don’t play coy with me.” 

Claude, ever-helpful Claude, chimes in with, “I’ve heard Sylvain wax poetic about his _crush_ too many times to count.” Sylvain makes an affronted noise in response but doesn’t choose to argue, which earns a smirk from Claude – smug fucker – as he peels a lemon, the smell of citrus bright as it wafts across the bar. 

Dorothea pouts at him. “C’mon, Syl. You tell Claude but you’re holding back from _us?”_

Mercedes reaches out, slipping her hand into his, as warm and comforting as the first time they met, the fateful first day of Sylvain’s freshman year, fresh off the eight-hour drive from Greenwich with red-rimmed eyes, a hollow space in his heart, and the half-comforting, half-terrifying knowledge that he was headed to a city where nobody recognized his last name. He’d flirted with her through the droning, day-long orientation but his heart wasn’t in it, and for whatever godforsaken reason, she’d taken pity on him and slipped him under her wing, his dependable, level-headed friend through those first awkward semesters and beyond. 

She’d seen him through his lowest lows, a steady lighthouse of love and laughter during flint rocks and high water; her level-headedness saving his sanity (and sometimes his grace), offering a shoulder to cry on and stern words when he needed it most, never judging him for his family name or his brother’s actions, but for how he showed up each day; _his_ actions and words. Sylvain still wonders what he did to deserve someone like her sticking around through the thick of it all.

Anyway: Mercie’s hand in his, soothing and light as a feather, like she can read every unwritten emotion flitting across his face. She probably can. “What’s he like?” 

“Well,” he starts, careful. There hadn’t really been a good time to explain the whole situation to his friends, not all at once – Claude’s only the most filled-in out of all of them because they live together. He’s mostly kept Felix to himself, his own precious secret, choosing to keep him separate from the rest of his life, like if he speaks his real feelings about him into existence it’ll somehow jinx everything.

“His name is Felix. He’s in the advanced fine arts program at the university. He needed a live model for the senior gallery show in the spring.” Sylvain shrugs, as if two sentences are enough, would ever be enough, to sum up Felix Fraldarius.

Dorothea frowns; Mercie’s brow furrows as she tucks a stray lock of hair back into her braid. “But what’s he _like,_ Sylvain?”

How _could_ he describe Felix? Memories flit through his mind, each more rose-colored than the last: how beautiful he’d looked, wrapped up in Sylvain’s wool scarf, protected from the cold winter air; how badly he’d wanted to take his hand, to weave freckled fingers through the gaps in Felix’s as they walked across campus together; how he managed to draw Sylvain out of his solipsistic slumps with sharp words dripping from an even sharper tongue, dotted with jeweled metal that made Sylvain’s heart pound a little harder in his chest every time he caught a glimpse of them.

“He’s… sarcastic.” Dorothea laughs a little at this, which gives Sylvain the encouragement he needs to continue. “Funny, even though he doesn’t know it. Focused… driven. A really, really good artist.” Sylvain knows he’s gushing, but he can’t stop now – they’re both turned to him, drinks long-forgotten, soaking condensation into their coasters. “He’s beautiful,” and it feels like a confession, breathed out in a rush, his voice low and quiet now, full of fondness and something more, something scary he’s not ready to put a word to yet, “so fucking beautiful. He gets this blush, all the way to his ears, and–” he’s run out of words for it, the crimson rubescence Felix gets across his cheeks, because words can’t do it justice, can’t begin to describe how warm it makes him feel, “–God.” Sylvain looks to Dorothea, who’s hiding a grin behind her straw, then to Mercie, whose smile is so soft and knowing it makes his chest clench with a twist of heartache. Sylvain’s heart sinks when he thinks of Felix’s smile, of the unanswered text on his phone. “God, you guys, I’m _so_ fucked.” 

Claude looks on from the bar, faintly amused, hands busy mixing and pouring another drink, handing it over to Sylvain with a sympathetic smile. Mercedes and Dorothea turn to each other, momentarily conspiring with only a brief flick of their eyes, a quirk of their lips; Sylvain’s too busy drowning his feelings in Campari and sweet vermouth to notice.

“Yeah, you’ve got it bad, alright.” Dorothea pats his arm affectionately. “When do you see him next? Have you asked him on a date yet?”

“No.” Sylvain drags his gaze up to meet hers, leaning into the comforting way Mercie rubs circles into his shoulder with her thumb. “I don’t know. I _mentioned_ the exhibit at MAC, but he never responded, so I just got nervous, and I didn’t want to press it, or scare him off–”

“Sylvain.” Mercedes’ voice cuts through his downward spiral of thoughts, placid and logical as always, and Sylvain’s positive this is the same voice she takes with her class of kindergarteners. “Just take it slow, alright? There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“But–”

“No, Mercie is right,” Dorothea chimes in, quick as a whip and gently stern. Sylvain’s argument dies in his throat, protests of _but I always fuck everything up_ bubbling up and fizzing out. 

“Look.” She breathes out, exasperated, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We’ve known you for– what, seven years now? Eight?” Mercedes nods along with her in wholehearted agreement (why did he decide to introduce these two, again? All they ever do is gang up on him). “And I’ve never seen you like this. Not about someone else.” 

Dorothea exchanges glances with Mercedes, who picks up right where she left off. It’s kind of scary, how both of them can read him _and_ each other so well. Her voice is soothing-sweet in his ear. “It’s okay to… to _actually care,_ Syl. Just take it slow, get to know him better. Don’t overthink it. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.” 

“I’ll fuck it up,” Sylvain mourns, the very picture of pitiful as he sips his drink, untasting in his misery. “I always do–”

Dorothea flicks him on the temple, fondly annoyed. Sylvain flinches and glares back at her. “Stop that. Give yourself a chance, won’t you? You’re not the same person you were five years ago – hell, _one_ year ago. Stop acting like it.” Mercedes nods serenely on the other side of him and takes a dignified bite of salmon pastry. 

“You haven’t fucked it up yet, have you? And you’ve been talking for…”

“A month. Give or take,” Sylvain fills in, an embarrassed flush spreading across his face, feeling ridiculous and more than a little melodramatic, especially when Thea points it out like that, so obvious and level-headed. Anxiety still writhes in his gut, but it’s less of a vice-grip and more of a low, steady burn. 

“Right! Exactly. So just… keep doing what you’re doing. Be yourself.” Dorothea pats his shoulder again, a little gentler this time. He just nods and gives her a small smile, meant to be reassuring but it comes out a little shaky. 

Sylvain clears his throat and knocks back the last sip of his drink, feeling both a little sick and a little reassured. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I’m overthinking this.” 

“Sylvain?” Mercedes’ voice is soft and gentle, a summer breeze ruffling through his hair, the sway of cotton-linen snapping in the wind, riding that tender line between unconditional love and brutal honesty. “I’m happy for you. It’s nice… seeing you actually care about someone. He must be something special.”

Her words stick with him for the rest of the night, swirling around and around in his head like the alcohol swirls in his stomach. He thinks of them _(I’m happy for you)_ even as they move onto lighter topics like the holiday party they throw every year and how excited all of Mercedes’ class is for their upcoming field trip to the firehouse in a month; he thinks of them _(it’s nice...)_ even as they stumble their way out of the bar and into the subway station and ride dizzily through the city; he thinks of them _(...seeing you actually care about someone)_ even as he greets Goose at the door and takes her for a long, cold walk around the neighborhood, lost in thoughts muddied by bourbon and Felix. 

He’s drowsing off in bed, glasses sliding dangerously low down his nose as he scrolls idly through his list of apps, thumb hovering over the folder labeled with a single eggplant emoji, full of icons of tiny, stylized flames and various gradient-filled hearts, that group of apps he hasn’t opened in the past two months, clogged up with red notifications in each of their corners, when an alert slides into the top of his screen.

 _[Felix]:_ _  
__Obviously dogs don’t wear pants like that. I’d like to see you try that with Goose._ _  
__Sent 11:43pm_

 _[Felix]:_ _  
__Anyway. Are you free Friday? I’d like to get another session in, if you’re around._ _  
__Sent 11:44pm_

 _He must be something special,_ she said. Why was Mercedes always, _always_ right?

_I had a fever until I met you_ _  
__Now you make me cool_  
 _But sometimes I still do_  
 _Something embarrassing_

_—_

“Twenty more minutes okay?”

Felix’s voice rings out across his apartment, clear and low. 

It’s Friday, and they’re back in their usual positions: Felix seated behind the easel, Sylvain perched on his stool in the middle of the dining-room-turned-studio, white sheet half-draped across his waist. Low daylight streams in, watery and weak, but it warms his back nonetheless, gentle heat soft as a lover’s kiss. His robe is folded beneath his bare ass, foot outstretched in the same position he’s been holding on and off for a couple hours. Thankfully, Felix finished his profile first, leaving them free to talk quietly over the soft thrum of music from the living room speakers, playing an upbeat but melancholic song: _I draw a line in my life, singing this is the new way I behave now, and actually live by the shape of that sound._

Sylvain nods and tosses Felix a smile he can’t see from behind the canvas. “Yeah, but then _food._ I’m starving.”

“It’s your fault for not picking up bagels,” Felix retorts, all bark and no bite, the curl of a smile threaded through his voice audible from across the room. 

Sylvain pouts, fidgeting a bit on the stool. His foot slips. Shit. “They were all out!”

“Stay still,” Felix chides, eyes flicking up to take him in again. Sylvain has no idea how he even managed to catch him moving, but he steadies his foot and returns his ankle to the original angle Felix had tilted it at. 

Sylvain’s gotten used to the discomfort, leaned into the way Felix’s eyes wrap him up in liquid amber and the flutter of dark lashes, warm as summer and cerise sunsets glowing across the downtown canals and the cove he grew up splashing in, perfumed in cutting edges of equal parts withering wit and amused affection; at least, Sylvain thought it might be affection, or maybe something similar, those brief flashes of his smile distinctly fond.

Speaking of – Sylvain watches a tiny smile flit across Felix’s face when his eyes flicker over to his paused foot, no longer bouncing rapidly up and down. He loses himself (not for the first time that day) in the furrow of Felix’s brow, forehead creased in concentration, as he finishes up. 

“Alright. Done for today.”

“Whew,” Sylvain breathes out in a gust of held-in air, luxuriating in the stretch of his arms high above his head, fingertips nearly brushing against the chandelier dripping old-Victorian elegance and prisms catching light refracted back into infinite spinning fractals. The sheet tied loosely around his waist slips low – it’d be indecent, if Felix hadn’t seen him naked a handful of times before – as he plucks his robe from the stool and drapes it loosely around his shoulders, letting the sheet pool liquid silk onto the paint-speckled hardwoods. 

Really, it’s a miracle of luck and sheer force-of-will Sylvain hasn’t been, well, _embarrassed_ so far in any of their sessions; he hasn’t allowed his mind to run wild in daydream imaginations of all the things he’d like to do to Felix, of what he’d like _Felix_ to do to _him._ Talking the hours away helps, and when Felix works on his face and talking isn’t an option, reciting cocktail recipes internally seems to do the trick as well. 

“Sore?” Felix’s tone is vaguely teasing as he diligently cleans off his brushes, swirling each one through muddied water and patting it dry.

Sylvain stretches, shaking the numbness out of his limbs. His morning runs with Claude have been absolutely kicking his ass, and Hilda has been taunting him even more than usual during Caspar’s spin classes, but the hard work is paying off, visible in the toned definition of his arms and the tops of his thighs.

“Yeah, something like that.” 

Sylvain shoos a sleepy Trout off of his pile of clothes (he’d taken to making a nest of them almost immediately after Sylvain stripped each time, much to Goose’s excitement when he came home covered in ginger hair and smelling like cat), pulling his boxers on and then tugging his shirt over his head.

“Where do you wanna eat?” Felix calls through the open double-doors as he pulls his jeans on and half-stumbles against the back of the couch. The whole thing feels impossibly familiar, the casual domesticity flooding prickly heat through his heart. 

“Whatever you want. I’m not picky.” Wait. He’s seen the inside of Felix’s fridge while pulling out the water pitcher, and it’s about eighty percent hot sauce. “Except uh, super spicy. Can’t do that, I’m afraid.”

“Wimp.”

Felix crosses the threshold, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over the tight knit of his turtleneck, clad in nothing but thin leggings and socks that have little slices of cake all over them (“A gift from Annie,” he’d grumbled earlier by way of explanation when Sylvain had quirked an eyebrow at them). He has an amused smirk on his face, and Sylvain swears he’d do anything to keep it there. “Are burgers okay?”

“Burgers are great.” 

Felix grunts in what sounds like affirmation (Sylvain can never be sure, though) as he moves around the apartment – he can see the shadow of him throwing clothes around in the bedroom, doors half-cracked, presumably changing into something warmer. 

Sylvain only struggles a little getting each of his socks on, sinking down on the edge of the sofa for balance as he does so. Trout immediately jumps up, drawn to his lap like a magnet. “Hey, buddy,” Sylvain murmurs, task momentarily forgotten to scratch in between Trout’s ears for a couple of minutes, Trout purring happily against his palm.

When Sylvain glances up to see if Felix is close to being ready, his eye catches a painting hanging near the bay window.

It’s a landscape – foamy grey sea meeting pink-white sky, the rocky shore dotted with fuzzy white-capped rocks and smudged sea grass. Two figures, far in the distance, run down the beach, both wrapped in strokes of aquamarine and cream. It’s too abstract to see much of their expressions, but their body language is that of infectious joy, even as small as they are. It looks like Felix’s work, but there’s something a bit off about it: the shadows are a little more colorful, lilac dappling grey-blues and oranges; the strokes a little looser, not as clipped-in and constrained around the edges. 

When Felix walks back in, wearing those black leather platform boots Sylvain had drooled over the first time they met, zipping a plush puffer coat up to his chin, he’s still focused on the painting.

“Is this one of yours?”

“No. My mom’s.”

Sylvain smiles – this isn’t the first time Felix has mentioned his family (he gushes, or at least comes as close to gushing as Felix can get, about Glenn and Max), but it’s the first Sylvain’s heard him talk of either of his parents.

“Oh, she’s a painter too? I thought it looked familiar. You have similar styles.”

The pause that follows is a little too long. Sylvain looks up at him expectantly, sees the line of Felix’s gaze fall to the painting, watches the tug of his lip, an unmistakable waver, before he inhales sharply. His gaze flattens out, the light flickering out of his eyes, replaced by something distinctly dimmer.

 _“Was_ a painter. She died when I was young.” Felix’s tone is oddly smooth, close to unaffected but not quite there. “This was one of the last pieces she did before…” He trails off, flapping his hand vaguely, gesturing to the painting, the apartment, all of it; he clears his throat and looks away. “It’s my brother and I.”

Sylvain’s heart sinks right to the bottom of his chest, voice catching in his throat as he struggles to find a response. Fuck, he couldn’t have known, but why had he brought it up in the first place? “I’m so sorry,” he says quietly, knowing that any condolences he has to offer are too surface-level, too late, too meaningless. “It’s a lovely painting. She was very talented.”

Felix shrugs and looks over to Sylvain, his eyes flitting down to where Trout purrs, belly-up, in his lap. Sylvain smiles weakly back. He wants to reach out and take Felix’s hand in his, wants to brush the bangs from out of his eyes, wants to stroke a knuckle down the soft line of his jaw, wants to kiss the melancholy right out of his mouth until sorrow turns to breathless sighs, wants to drown it in hopeful yearning and something that feels a little too close to love.

Sylvain doesn’t do any of those things. Just sits and breathes Felix in, and continues rubbing his thumb over Trout’s ear, wishing he’d never said anything at all. 

“It’s alright. I was really young, I don’t remember much.” Felix perches himself on the arm of the sofa, his thighs close to Sylvain’s but not touching; he can feel body heat radiating through two pairs of denim and too many centimetres of empty space, can feel the brush of Felix’s down jacket, soft as duck-feather, when he leans over him to scratch between Trout’s ears. 

“Sorry,” Felix almost-laughs, small and nervous, a burst of awkward air between them. His blush creeps in, high over his cheeks, as he glances out the window, sunset quickly fading into dusky evening shades, street lights flickering incandescent light. 

Felix pulls away and Trout chirrups indignantly at the perceived slight, batting a paw back out towards him.

“Ready?”

“Oh– yeah.” Sylvain startles and finishes pulling his sock back on.

They step out into the polar vortex of Montreal in the winter, leaving behind the warm haven of Felix’s apartment, Trout meowing them incessantly out the door. Sylvain lets Felix take the lead, down the porch steps and into the not-quite-night, past the spill of twenty-somethings chain-smoking outside of Italian cafés closing up shop and Greek delis just gearing up for the drunk Friday-night crowd later; through the winding chords of soundchecks rattling thin-paned windows from the handful of concert venues in all their gilded neo-baroque glory.

“I’ve only been here once with Ashe and Ingrid. It might be a little crowded.” Felix lights a cigarette as they walk, smoke billowing puff-clouds that stream out the side of his mouth, filtering through the air around them.

“Oh, I have an Ashe, too.” Sylvain accepts the pack that Felix hands him wordlessly, pausing momentarily to light up. Felix turns to look back at him, an unreadable expression on his face as he sucks in more smoke, eyes incarnadine embers in the low light. “Ashe Duran?”

Sylvain’s mind short-circuits temporarily. “You know Ashe?” 

Felix’s face breaks out into a small smile. “Yeah. We were in orientation together, freshman year. I adopted Trout from him, actually.”

Sylvain’s grinning hard, a bubble of unbelievable giddiness rising in his chest. “Yeah, I adopted Goose from him.” 

Felix comes to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, eyebrow quirking up at him in disbelief. “What–”

“Mercedes introduced me to him. They were in the education program together for a year or so until he dropped out and–”

“–and went to vet school,” Felix finishes for him, smirking wide now. “Yeah, I know, he’s my friend too.” He inhales again, smoke rippling patterns through the twilight as they resume their walk. “God, I can’t believe we didn’t figure that out sooner.”

“Yeah.” Sylvain briefly wonders how else they might be connected, six degrees of separated, but just don’t know it. “Small world.” 

He doesn’t have time to dwell on it, can’t pull out their phones and compare lists of their friends to see exactly where their social network overlaps (Felix doesn’t believe in Facebook and only has a half-dead Instagram: the most recent post is a photo of him and Annie from five years ago), because then they’re stubbing out their cigarettes and Felix is opening the door of the restaurant, tucked back from the main street down a couple of half-steps.

Despite what Felix had guessed about it being busy, less than half the tables are full, the quiet hum of music faintly audible over the cutlery clinking and the cocktails being shaken behind the mahogany bar. The table the waitress leads them to is all the way in the back corner, a tiny booth of tufted leather upholstery that has Sylvain’s knees brushing against Felix’s when they sit down.

The menu is simple but trendy, featuring duck-fat fries and aioli-smeared burgers and long, complicated names of all the craft beers on tap. Sylvain hums absentmindedly as he flips through it, eyes flicking up to Felix every so often, his mouth twisted into a concentrated pout as he skims through overpriced appetizers and a list of wittily-named seasonal drinks. With the dim candlelight and the tops of their menus overlapping, it’s starting to feel less like two friends getting dinner and more like a real, honest-to-God, actual date. Not like he’s been dreaming about this exact scenario for the past couple of weeks. Sylvain swallows half his water down out of nervousness, anxious to keep his hands busy. 

But then they order (a rum and coke with lime for Felix, while Sylvain goes with a Moscow mule), and Felix asks for the story of how Ashe introduced him to Goose, the conversation falling back to curious and quiet and comfortable, like they’d never left Felix’s apartment at all; the pieces starting to click back into place, just as the gaps in Sylvain’s guard start to slowly crack apart, caught up in the way the metal threaded through Felix’s septum glints off candlelight and his eyebrows furrow and quirk, growing steadily more expressive as the number of empty cups on their table grows.

Their food comes, and by the time Sylvain’s finished he’s full and content, limbs loose-lazy from liquor and the heaviness of the burger and fries in his stomach, slouching back against the booth, his arms spread wide over the plush top. Felix sits with an equally empty plate in front of him and a half-glazed look in his eye as he rambles on about growing up in the South. There’s that signature blush against his cheeks, but made semi-permanent by the alcohol, and Sylvain truly, truly wants nothing more than to cover every inch of that flush with close-mouthed kisses, to taste spicy-sweet rum through the cracks and creases of his chapped lips, to smooth his hair away from his eyes and spout joke after unfunny joke, just for the chance to hear that bemused bark of a laugh again.

“–and anyway, he was just never there for me, you know? I just always assumed there would be more time, but then there just… wasn’t, I guess.” Felix blushes harder and looks down into his fourth drink, giving it a little stir with the doubled-up straws. “Sorry for getting all morose on you again.” Felix sounds vulnerable and tipsy, and Sylvain feels like he’s right there behind him, thick-tongued and enthusiastic, before he swings back into walled-off and melancholic, almost as if he’s angry at himself at admitting weakness. “I don’t really talk about this. At least not with anyone who would understand.” He laughs, a horrible sound, empty with bitterness and heartbreak and regret. “Everyone gets real uncomfortable when you start talking about your dead parents, you know?”

Sylvain had retold the short, uninteresting story of his father’s relationship earlier _(hated my brother for who he was, hated me for who I would never become, hated himself most of all)_ because for some reason, talking about Felix’s mother earlier combined with the steady flow of alcohol seemed to loosen something in both of them, had picked the lock on the door labeled _trauma_ and opened it a crack, just enough for some of their issues to squeeze out into the air between them: Sylvain cracking his chest open to show Felix a handful of the ugly parts inside of him, shocked and surprised and a little devastated when he doesn’t run away, but actually, honest-to-God _relates_ to him: an empty home, with gaps left by his beloved mother and an absent father, the expectations put on his brother Glenn similar to Sylvain’s in that it was all too much pressure, unrelenting until he’d finally snapped under it, Felix helpless to do anything but watch.

“Yeah. I know.” Sylvain nods and takes another sip of his drink, the world fuzzy at the edges, making Felix a pleasant vignette in the center of his half-blurry vision. “I kept expecting my father to… to apologize, to make amends, or something.” He shrugs. “Stupid thing to hope, really. He was never one to admit he was wrong.”

“Mm. I get that.” Felix’s eyes fill with something sad and a little cold, and it’s enough to completely shatter Sylvain’s heart. He decides to steer the conversation towards other, happier things – it’s clear they could go on all night like this, both losers in a twisted game of one-upping each other.

“How’s Max doing? Did she start school?” 

Earlier last week, Felix had texted him a picture of him and Max standing out on a front porch, Max holding a sign nearly the size of her that read _Maxine’s first day of kindergarten,_ listing out trivia like her favorite color _(purple)_ and what she wants to be when she grows up _(a firefighter)._ The ‘ _ine’_ in her name, meticulously spelled out (in Annette’s handwriting, Felix explained, there was no way he or Glenn were capable of writing something legible in any way, shape, or form) in chalk, had been scribbled out. _Holst and Annie insisted,_ Felix’s follow-up text read. _They’re insufferable together,_ which explained the slightly-less-than-enthused look on Felix’s face in the photo.

This, predictably, brings a smile to Felix’s face. “Yeah. She _loves_ her teacher. Wouldn’t stop gushing about her last week on our ice cream date. _Miss M._ this, _Miss M._ that. They’re going on a field trip next month and she’s _so_ excited.” 

“Aw. That’s great.”

“Yeah. I’ll see her next weekend.” Felix smiles, one of his rare ones, unfettered by pouts or grimaces, just pure, softened joy. “We’re going to the exhibit at the MAC.” He looks away, blushing hard. “Sorry, by the way, for not texting back, I–”

“Felix, it’s okay.” Sylvain smiles back, soft affection bleeding crimson through his voice. He’s touched, really, that Felix would even remember the hopeful text he’d sent near midnight on a Tuesday, left unanswered and glossed over, too forward. _Just take it slow._ “I bet you two will have a lot of fun.”

Felix smiles, small and grateful, and orders a bottle of wine next. Usually Sylvain would pull a face at mixing drinks this far in, but he can’t really say no, not when Felix is offering his glass out, tilted askew, only satisfied when Sylvain tips his stem towards Felix’s and the two edges _clink_ together, the sound of glass-on-glass ringing between the two of them.

“So are we celebrating something I don’t know about?” Sylvain teases as Felix pulls away, taking a long sip of wine, only pulling face a little at the sweetness.

Felix shrugs. “Nah, it’s something my brother’s always done. Guess I’ve picked up the habit.”

“I like it,” Sylvain decides, lips curling golden honey across his face, winking cheekily at Felix. “Cheers.”

 _“Santé,”_ Felix returns with a coy smile, and that’s when Sylvain knows he’s absolutely, positively doomed to find salvation in the curve of Felix’s rose-quartz lips; that the beginning of the end for him looks a lot like the glimpse of teeth and metal against blushing cheeks, the cut of crystal cheekbones flushing pink, a dark ponytail cascading long over sharp shoulder blades. 

—

“I should go feed Trout,” Felix says, slurring every three or four words. Sylvain wants to tack on _and then kiss me stupid?_ but somehow manages to miraculously refrain and agree instead. “Yeah, Goose is probably pretty lonely.” He polishes off the last of his water, having switched over after the last glass of wine trickled sticky-saccharine from the bottle (the hangovers hit different past twenty-five, he’s found), and reaches for the bill at the same moment Felix does. 

Their fingers linger there together over the long strip of paper, and maybe if Sylvain was more bold and less confident about all the ways this could go wrong, didn’t have Mercie’s voice circling around his head like an echo _(just take it slow),_ maybe then he would’ve closed the gap and let his fingers brush feather-silk against Felix’s ink-stained ones.

As it is, Felix is quicker and snatches the receipt up. “I’m paying. As a thank you.” 

Sylvain tilts his head at him, quizzical, but Felix’s blush deepens as he goes on. “For… being a good model. And helping me with this project.” He’s impossibly pink now, looking nearly sunburnt in the flicker of light burning from the glass votive between them, lashes casting long shadows across the peach of his cheeks. “And all the bagels,” Felix tacks on with a small smirk. He looks like he wants to say something else, but just swallows and leaves it at that, suddenly interested in finishing the dregs of his drink. 

Sylvain smiles. “Well, thank you. It was delicious. I’ll return the favor sometime.” 

Felix nods, scrawling a chaotic signature across the receipt in a sharp scribble of the pen, and before Sylvain can fully put together what’s happening, he’s stumbling after Felix while they pull their coats and scarves on, bursting out onto the sidewalk like a breath of fresh air, cool and crisp and smelling like almost-snow. He’s a little beyond tipsy now, riding the blurry edge of sobriety as Felix starts to steer them back the way they came, Sylvain happily following along, floating worriless and warm after him. 

But then Felix stops, half-turning back the way they came, an unreadable expression twisted up on his face. Sylvain turns his gaze to follow Felix’s, a two-second delay to his mirrored actions. “Forget something?”

Felix shakes his head, hard gaze flicking over to him, melting just the tiniest bit into something barely soft when they lock eyes. “No. The subway station is the other way,” he says, not quite framed as a question, but not really a statement either, a half-confused thing that takes Sylvain a moment to properly parse in his current state. 

“Oh– oh. Right. I forgot.” Sylvain rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, half-apologies forming and dying on his lips. “Sorry,” he finally offers, gaze flicking back up the street to the long walk home alone. 

“What are you apologizing for?” Felix asks, and either the vodka hit him harder than he thought, or he’s starting to hallucinate, because when he looks down, Felix is much closer, barely an arm’s length between them; his breath billowing out to mix with his own under the vast night sky. Sylvain is gripped by the urge to sip the air straight from his lungs, to light a fire in Felix’s bones and smother the flames with his own body.

“I don’t know,” Sylvain confesses, because yeah, he’s _definitely_ drunk, off booze and Felix in equal parts, his mind going fuzzy every time he looks down at the starlit twin pools of Felix’s eyes that strike flint and make fire crawl up Sylvain’s throat, feeling too much all at once. 

“Okay,” Felix barely breathes out, a near-whisper coloring the negative space between their bodies, a statement and a question and a conversation-ender all at once, and before Sylvain can think of some witty response or pull a grin from his back pocket or fully consider the potential consequences of his actions, he tilts his head, leans down, and kisses him.

Felix’s lips are chapped against his, cold-bitten and dry. It’s fleeting, close-lipped and short, Felix still as a statue, Sylvain’s desperate longing overpowering the faintest taste of rum and cola before he returns to his senses and pulls away.

Felix’s face doesn’t give him even the tiniest hint to how he’s feeling, just wide, wide eyes and an almost-stunned, almost-blank expression, breath puffing out in cloudbursts around them. Mercedes’ words orbit through his head again - _just take it slow, slow, slow, slow -_ enough to make him feel sick to his stomach, because he’s done it again, let his heart overtake his head and fucked everything up in a single fell swoop.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

Sylvain stumbles backwards, fumbling out a stuttered, stilted apology, nonsense filling the widening gap between them as he tries to clear his head. 

“Felix, I’m sorry, I got carried away.”

Amber eyes flicker, expression shifting into something that looks almost upset and angry, and oh _God_ how he’s read the situation all sorts of wrong if Felix is looking at him like that, distinctly pissed off, mouth twisted into a frown. “Why–” he starts, but Sylvain can’t bear to hear it, embarrassment and shame already burning hot across his face.

“Fuck, I’m so, so sorry. I should go–” he bites off, runs his hand through his hair, trying to fight off the panicky waves threatening to rise up and choke him with tears.

“Yeah, I should go,” he repeats, and now his feet are walking too fast for his brain to keep up, letting his fight-or-flight instinct default to the latter as he moves half-backwards away from Felix: away from the flutter of messy dark hair in the cool breeze; away from the one person he’s dared to let himself feel anything beyond fleeting attraction for; away from (if he’d looked closer, been paying better attention, hadn’t been so caught up in himself for once) the distinctly heartbroken look in Felix’s eyes as he watches him go, shimmering iridescent sorrow beneath streetlamps and starlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (ahhh i'm SORRY feel free to scream at me but i promise i'll make it better next chapter!!! [@cherryconke](https://twitter.com/cherryconke))


	4. feel something

_I’m still frustrated with last night_ _  
__Things happened in half time, I’m sick of the bends_ _  
__My panic research was no help, I sink into myself_ _  
__Afraid of the fall that never ends_

—

Sylvain waits a week before texting Felix. 

He spends five sweaty, long morning runs crafting carefully-worded apologies in his head, feet pounding the long stretches of canals, the pitter-patter of Goose’s paws and the jingle of her collar the only thing keeping him company in the frozen winter air. He spends six shifts checking his phone compulsively, irritating Linhardt to the point where his ever-calm, ever-apathetic friend had forced him to lock it in the storage closet for the rest of the day. He spends seven nights unable to fall asleep, typing and deleting and retyping _again,_ every sentence too hollow, too shallow; unable to work up the nerve to ever hit send.

That night – _The Night,_ with proper capitals,as Sylvain’s started to think of it – he’d gone straight home to Claude, a drunk, blubbering mess soaking tears and snot into the shoulder of his nightshirt (one that smelt not like him, but like his gentle giant of a now-boyfriend, Dimitri, who sat politely on the couch in his pajamas with Goose on his lap as Sylvain cried and hiccuped drunk sobs and repetitions of _I fucked up, Claude, I fucked up)._

Sylvain apologized the next morning, not to Felix but to Dimitri and Claude; pushed past his hangover to make a towering stack of box-mix pancakes for both of them, guilt-stricken until Claude had said _it’s alright, Sylvain, I’m sure it’s nothing we can’t fix_ around a mouthful of syrup and eggs, Dimitri nodding along earnestly beside him. 

At first, Sylvain thought he could try to forget: that between work and his friends, he’d be able to lose himself in distractions. He picked up extra shifts at the bar with Claude; he stayed well-past dark in the lab, Linhardt passed out in a drooly puddle next to him as he strained his eyes and listened to his favorite sad, whiny albums on repeat; he deleted the entire folder of dating apps from his phone, his therapist’s voice chanting _healthy coping mechanisms_ in his head as the folder _whoosh_ ed into the ether from his home screen. 

But what Sylvain hadn’t accounted for, what he’d vastly underestimated, was just how much he _missed_ talking to Felix every day. It’s easy and familiar, ingrained like a bad habit, well-worn like his favorite sweater, to pick up his phone a half-dozen times an hour expecting to see Felix’s name on the screen; just the sight of a handful of notifications enough to pull his lips into a smile, the surge of affection-laced adrenaline whenever his phone buzzes bright blue heady in his veins before reality hits and drains into bitter disappointment.

Sylvain tells himself all kinds of things, lies that taste sour even unspoken in his head: that maybe he can just chalk it up to another failed attempt at love, add it to the endless list of reasons why he’s meant for fucking around for a night or two and no longer than that, then maybe he can move past this; that kissing Felix on a whim like that was just a stupid, drunk mistake; that someone like Felix would never want someone like him, especially not like _that,_ someone valuable or vulnerable or worth keeping.

Of course, it doesn’t work.

On Friday (seven days after _The Night),_ he’s sprawled on the couch, a blanket and Goose across his lap, staring down at his phone. Felix’s text thread is pulled up. Their last exchange had been almost exactly a week ago, when Sylvain had texted _here! no bagels tho :(_ while waiting at his apartment door. He can hear Claude in the kitchen, smooth voice mixing with the clink and fizz of a beer being cracked open, the telltale plasticky rustle of a chip bag.

Sylvain huffs a sigh of frustration, deletes what he’d had typed out ( _hey, i’m sorry_ was as far as he’d gotten), slides his phone face down onto the coffee table.

“Who’re you talking to?” he calls out to Claude, letting his head loll back against the arm of the sofa to stare moodily up at the ceiling. 

“Yeah, yeah, see you soon, love.” Claude clicks off his phone and makes his way into the living room, passing a bag of chips to Sylvain, undoubtedly picked up from the _dépanneur_ around the corner. Sylvain waves them away, not bothering to look towards his roommate, but he can feel the knowing look Claude’s giving him from across the room. “Hilda. I called in the reinforcements.”

“The who?”

Claude waves his hand, fingers pinched around a chip, nonchalant as ever. “You know. The girls. They haven’t seen you all week and they’re all worried about you.”

“There’s no reason to be.” It _sounds_ like a lie, unconvincing and a little despondent, and even though Claude doesn’t say anything, Sylvain knows he can hear it too.

“Uh huh.” Claude’s clearly unconvinced. “Well, they’re coming over. Hilda’s bringing movies.”

“Cool.” Sylvain can’t seem to find it in him to summon excitement at the prospect of seeing his friends, even though deep down he knows it’ll be a good thing, or at the very least, a good distraction for a couple of hours until he falls asleep and wakes up tomorrow, feeling just as bad as he has today. 

Dorothea, Hilda, and Mercedes all show up at the door at once, carrying three pizza boxes and one of Mercedes’ homemade cakes and Hilda’s hard-drive full of every pirated movie under the sun. They pile into the apartment, scooping up Goose and passing her around for snuggles and eager puppy-kisses, settling into the familiar routine they used to have nearly every night when they were all in undergrad, textbooks and half-drank coffee cups piled high across the coffee table and floor as they studied and smoked their way into the early hours of the morning, over-caffeinated and underprepared. They’re older now, missing the textbooks but still full of fondness, and Sylvain feels fractionally buoyed by their bright presence.

“Did you remember what we told you? Go _slow,"_ Dorothea starts, dropping a quick lipstick kiss on the crown of his head. She drops the chastising act upon seeing his stricken expression, smile half-broken as she wraps him up in a hug.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I fucked that one up, didn’t I?”

Dorothea doesn’t miss the way his voice falls a little flat, clear in the way one of her brows raises up, but she mercifully decides not to comment, instead pressing another fond kiss to the side of his forehead as she brushes by him on her way into the kitchen to set the pizza down. Mercedes is next, quiet, but the look on her face says enough: unconditional love and _you absolute dumbass_ written across her features as she wraps Sylvain up in the most reassuring hug he can imagine; he nearly collapses into her from the heavy warmth of it.

“Claude already told me everything.” Hilda greets him with a quick, one-armed hug. 

Sylvain can’t help but smile at her casual frivolity, even now. “Nice to see you too, Hilda.”

It’s been awhile, but they fall back into it easily: Dorothea fetches everyone beer, Mercedes starts doling pizza out onto plates, and Hilda plops on the couch next to Sylvain to watch Claude fiddle with getting a movie set up and his laptop connected. 

“So, did you text him yet?” 

Hilda’s voice is a half-whisper as she scratches a glittery nail between Goose’s ears. They’ve all settled in, full of pizza and beer, overlapping at the edges. Mercedes has her legs spread out over both Dorothea and Claude’s laps, who are curled towards each other in quiet, conspiratorial conversation. Sylvain’s own head is cushioned on a pillow next to Hilda’s lap, which is currently occupied by Goose, who paws insistently at either of them whenever the pets stop for more than a few moments. The movie’s halfway over, some indie art-nouveau flick Claude dug up and threw on at the last minute, but nobody’s really paying attention: Mercedes is tapping away on her phone while Dorothea and Claude whisper back and forth, sipping their beer. It’s quiet and familiar, comfortable in a way that makes Sylvain’s heart ache a little. He briefly wonders what it would be like if Felix were here, tucked into his side, making snarky comments about the movie.

Sylvain sighs, swinging his legs off the arm of the sofa. “No. Not yet.”

Hilda’s expression is nearly unreadable when Sylvain looks up at her: half-bored, half… amused? Her hair’s pulled back into two identically messy buns, but she still has to look down through pink fringe and curled lashes to meet Sylvain’s eyes. “Why not?”

“Claude already told you. I kissed him, and he… well, he didn’t kiss me back.” Shame bubbles up in Sylvain’s throat as the words come out, but he swallows his pride down in favor of honesty. If anyone’s going to give him sound, unbiased advice, it’s Hilda.

“What was it like?”

Sylvain thinks back to that night: the press of his lips against Felix’s, fleeting and warm under the cold streetlights; the way he’d gone still, a deer caught in headlights; the blurry smudge of disappointment across his face when Sylvain had pulled away and apologized.

“Short. Drunk. Just a peck, really.”

“I don’t know, Sylvie.” Hilda shoves another chip in her mouth. Below her, Goose watches eagerly for crumbs to drop. “From what you said before, he seemed pretty into you. Are you sure you didn’t just take him by surprise?” 

Sure, it’s a possibility. An unlikely one, but one that a tiny corner of his brain has been clinging onto for the past few days, desperately wishing for it to be true.

“Hilda, you didn’t see his face after. He looked like he _hated_ me.”

Sylvain watches her twirl a stray lock of hair around her finger, eyes flicking back up to the movie as she considers. Hilda’s always been good – lazy, maybe a little reluctant, but good – at calculating possibilities and probabilities, strategic in a way that reminds Sylvain so much of Claude, but with a wry shrewdness he especially appreciates now. She’s been his confidant since he met her, dishing out uncannily relatable, pragmatic advice – not sugar-coated or charming, but a sharp dose of blunt honesty. 

Hilda looks back down at him, a little amused. “You’ve been texting for weeks. He’s seen you _naked,_ in his _apartment,_ multiple times!” 

“It was _professional,_ he hired me–”

Hilda snorts. “Yeah? Texting until 2am every night seems like a _very_ professional relationship to me.”

Damn. Hilda 1, Sylvain 0.

She sighs, a short, annoyed sound. “Sylvain, I really, really doubt he hates you for… one poorly-timed kiss. Maybe he just wasn’t expecting it. Or maybe he just wasn’t ready for it.”

Sylvain cranes his neck towards her, lip curling up in amusement. “Ready for _it?”_

Hilda shrugs. “A kiss. A boyfriend. I don’t know, could be anything. But you’ve been pining over him–”

“–I haven’t been _pining–”_

She continues on as if Sylvain hasn’t said anything, mowing over his outburst. “–pining over him for two months now, and from what you’ve told me, he seems pretty into you. I bet he was just caught off guard.”

“I guess?”

This time when Hilda looks down, her expression is dead serious. “Just text him. Apologize, but don’t be too pushy. The worst that could happen is he doesn’t respond, which wouldn’t even be _any_ different from where you’re at right now.”

Sylvain waits a beat, then two, then three. It’s useless to try and chalk the butterflies in his stomach that night up to the vodka; he recognizes that _Felix_ was the reason he felt so warm and light, floating on cloud nine, everything hazy and sweet up until the moment he found his lips pressed against Felix’s. 

Hilda nudges him back to reality, tapping a manicured nail on the tip of his nose. “C’mon, Gautier. Get it together. Melancholy doesn’t suit you.”

A buoyant bubble blossoms in his chest, trapped between his ribs and his heart. It prevails for the rest of the night, even when the girls leave, peppering fond kisses to his and Claude’s cheeks and squeezing him tight as they wave goodbye. It stays throughout his last evening walk around the block with Goose, fingers jammed into fleece-lined pockets as he shivers and shakes on the sidewalk, mentally wordsmithing everything he wants to say. It blooms into full-fledged giddy anxiety when he finally settles into bed with his phone and taps out a text, checks it once for typos, and hits _send_ before his own fingers can betray him.

_I never said I’d be alright_ _  
__Just thought I could hold myself together_ _  
__But I couldn’t breathe, I went outside_ _  
__Don’t know why I thought it’d be any better_ _  
__I’m fine now, it doesn’t matter_

—

When Felix’s phone lights up for the first time in a week with Sylvain’s name, he’s elbow-deep in flour and sugar, desperately trying to get the wet and dry ingredients to combine smoothly. He drops the mixing spoon (and nearly the bowl), swiping dirty hands haphazardly on his leggings, and ignores Annie’s annoyed _hey, where are you going_ as he stumbles out of the kitchen and into the privacy of his bathroom.

If Felix is being honest with himself, he’s still raw and a little bitter about last Friday, and he’s not really up for dealing with the humiliation of having to read whatever pitiful, devastating text Sylvain has sent him in front of Annette, who’s currently dealing with a crisis of her own: the original cookies she’d promised to bring to an a capella potluck had burnt to a crisp in Felix’s oven while they watched this week’s episode of _The Bachelorette._ (It definitely was _not_ Felix’s fault that he forgot to set a timer, thank you very much.)

If his fingers are shaking a little when he unlocks his phone, he doesn’t notice.

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__i’m sorry. i understand if you’d rather not see me again, but let me know if you need any more sessions to finish up. i’m still happy to help._ _  
__Sent 10:31pm_

Sitting on the edge of his bathtub, one hand pushed through his bangs, Felix thinks, _what the hell._

Then, he proceeds to fret over the right response for an entire week and a half. 

Felix didn’t originally intend to ghost Sylvain, but time slipped away, at first in tiny droplets and then in great big swathes, each day gone by yet another where he couldn’t figure out what to say:

_Hey, can we just pretend last week just... didn’t happen? Because personally, I’d like to wipe that from my memory, thanks._

No, too forward.

_Yeah, I want to see you again. I have a huge crush on you and your stupid jokes, and your stupid smile, and the way your hair is fucking impossible to paint, of course I want to see you again. I’ve been thinking about the dimple in your left cheek for the past two months, for fuck’s sake._

Felix could never. He’d die of embarrassment before getting more than ten words in.

_I’m sorry that kissing me was so horrible you had to apologize and run away. Is there any way you’d be up for a redo?_

Nothing seemed quite right.

 _Do you want to see him again?_ Ingrid asked patiently later that week over two giant bowls of eye-wateringly spicy ramen. When Felix nodded, her ever-sage advice was stupidly simple, although Felix himself felt incapable of actually following it: _so just tell him that. Ask him over. Use your words._ She’d gazed at him through steam and spice, shrewd expression leveling with Felix’s look of unease and doubt. _I promise, ’Lix, one bad kiss isn’t going to ruin everything._

The answer doesn’t come to him until he’s over at Glenn’s house that weekend. His new boyfriend – Holst – is making them all dinner _(homemade beef bourguignon from scratch_ had been the bait Glenn set for him, which had, unsurprisingly, worked). The entire thing would be too sweet and grossly domestic if Felix hadn’t begged Annette to come along to take the pressure of socializing off his shoulders; she’s one of Max’s favorite people, anyway.

“And then, _then_ Holst showed us how they slide down the firepole!” Annette bursts out laughing, and even Felix can’t help but chuckle quietly from the couch. Max giggles along like it’s the funniest thing in the world, though Felix is positive she doesn’t _quite_ get the joke.

“Dinner’s almost ready.”

Glenn’s head pops around the arched door frame, ponytail swinging long and straight down his back. “Fe?” He gestures towards the back patio, an unspoken _cigarette?_ hanging off his lips. Felix nods, fingertips grazing the top of Max’s head as he skirts around the two girls sprawled out on the living room rug. Annie’s busy painstakingly painting each of Max’s tiny nails _(black, like Fe-Fe’s, but with glitter on top, pleeeeeease, Annie?),_ both of them too caught up in learning the lyrics to made-up, nonsensical songs to notice him leaving.

Felix and Glenn slip past Holst, bubblegum-pink hair tied back into a ridiculous bun as he bounces around the kitchen, humming something off-key in a way that reminds Felix so much of Sylvain singing in the quiet light of his own apartment. Holst really is insistent on charming his way to Felix’s heart through his stomach (not a bad approach, really) tonight: fragrant brisket mixes with bacon and red wine gravy in the pan as Holst stirs and sips cheerfully on a beer. Felix doesn’t miss the playful way he swats his brother’s ass, or the satisfied smirk on Glenn’s face as he returns it with a quick kiss to Holst’s bicep. Felix just rolls his eyes. _Ugh._

“So,” Glenn starts, once they’ve lit up beneath the dark sky, both in flimsy house slippers and down coats on the little covered patio that looks out into the rest of the fenced backyard and the grass covered under two feet of snow. Felix had teased Glenn mercilessly when he moved out into the suburbs last year, with biting taunts of _old man_ and threats that he’d never come visit him way out in the boonies – that is, until he’d seen the way Max’s face had lit up at the swingset in the backyard, and in turn, how Glenn’s face had lit up at seeing Max, flying high under the poplar tree. 

“So,” Felix parrots back, sucking down smoke, letting it curl lazily out of the corner of his mouth as he looks out at the backyard, avoiding Glenn’s gaze.

 _"So,_ you’re in a shit mood.” 

Felix huffs a laugh, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, well. Not all of us can be as chipper as Holst and Annie all the time.”

Glenn returns this with a level glare, one Felix has never particularly liked being on the receiving end of. “Something happened,” he says, vague as ever.

“What makes you think that?”

Now it’s Glenn’s turn to laugh, short and barking and unamused. He counts off each piece of evidence with a finger, tapping them off one by one, cigarette slowly smouldering to ash in his hand. “Gee, I don’t know, Fe – you keep checking your phone, you’re even bitchier than usual, you haven’t mentioned Sylvain _at all,_ and I’m starting to think that–”

Felix cuts him off before he can finish, discomfort twisting deep in his gut. How the hell was Glenn always so uncannily right on the mark about these kinds of things? “Okay, alright. Yeah. I get it.”

“Yeah?”

Felix nods. Glenn’s always had a way of extracting as much information out of him as possible without saying much. Sometimes, Felix thinks he’d be a better lawyer or professional poker player than an emergency responder with his ridiculously good blank stare and flat affect.

They’re quiet under the stars. Felix thinks of the kiss, seared into his memory like a white-hot brand, how it had all happened so fast – so fast he’d had no time to react, to do what he’d dreamt of: fist his hand in the front of Sylvain’s coat and pull him close, trace bruising fingers along the jawbone he’d been staring at over the edge of his easel for the past few weeks, slip his tongue between plush velvet and drown in the taste of rum and coke coalesced with wine.

“Sylvain kissed me.”

Glenn takes a drag off his cigarette and flicks the ashes idly into a tray on the patio table. Felix’s eyes flick, almost nervously, to him, but he’s too busy staring off into the indeterminable distance to notice. They don’t speak like this often, openly broken and vulnerable, but Glenn’s always been the steady, single constant in Felix’s life, there to pick him up and set him on his feet again when the going gets rough. Felix pushes past the faint nausea rising up in his stomach and continues.

“Then he said he didn’t mean to and ran away.”

Glenn perks up at this, turning with a passive expression to Felix. Smoke envelopes them both in a little cloud, harsh edges blurred in the freezing air.

“Ran away? Like, he literally–” Glenn mimes running with two fingers across one palm. His cigarette comes dangerously close to catching on his sleeve. _“–ran_ away?”

“Yes– no?” Felix flusters under his impenetrable gaze. “He walked away. Whatever. You know what I mean, he left.”

Glenn turns back towards the dark sky again. “Have you talked to him since?”

“No. He texted me a week ago.” 

Glenn stubs out his cigarette and immediately pulls the pack out to light a new one. “And?”

God, he’s really going to make him say it out loud, isn’t he? _“And_ I haven’t texted back.”

 _Click, spark, inhale._ “Huh.”

“Yeah.”

Then Glenn asks: “You were both drunk?”

Felix knows Glenn isn’t judging; god knows how many drunken nights he’d called Felix up in the past, sloppy and slurring into the receiver. But there’s an implication laced in his question, a valid one, one that asks: _are you sure it wasn’t just that: a drunk kiss?_

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

Felix learned a long time ago not to push his brother’s non-responses, that Glenn will get to whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to. He feels a little singed on the edges, burnt out on vulnerability and an entire week of anxious hours spent fretting over Sylvain’s unanswered text. Smoke fills his lungs and the air around them, bitter and bright, keeping him grounded.

“You know, I didn’t really like Holst at first.”

Felix can’t help but laugh. There’s a tiny smirk on Glenn’s face now, indiscernible if Felix hadn’t grown up mapping his expressions: the tiny uptick of one brow when he’s talking to someone he doesn’t like; the nearly invisible way he bites the inside of his cheek when he’s masking laughter; the curl of his lip when he’s half-annoyed, half-amused. 

“Why’s that?”

Glenn shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you. He’s just so… _nice.”_

Felix thinks about Sylvain, about his soft edges and easy laughter. He thinks about the way Sylvain leaned into him when they rode the subway together back from campus: the electric static shock when their thighs pressed against each other’s on the plastic seats; the lingering smell of Sylvain’s scarf around his neck, richly perfumed with oranges and fresh, herby sweetness; the bright spark in Sylvain’s eyes whenever Felix talked about anything, even mundane, boring shit, like he was the only person that mattered. 

He thinks about the way Sylvain coos at Trout unabashedly, how he hums songs in his kitchen and on his balcony in perfect tenor, the way his feet twitch restlessly under Felix’s gaze when he’s seated on the stool in the center of his dining-room-turned-studio, how he orders every stupidly sweet drink available at cafés and bars alike.

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

Glenn sighs smoke into the air. His voice gets quiet and low, serious in a way Felix hasn’t heard in a long time. “For a long time, I didn’t think I deserved nice things.”

Now, Felix thinks of Miklan. He’d been the worst thing to happen to his brother, as far as Felix is concerned, even if he never actually met him – Glenn’s ex-boyfriend had been nothing if not excellent at emotional manipulation and playing games, and Glenn had been smart enough to keep his life with him in New York _very_ separate from his family. 

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, Glenn had stayed – stayed far too long. 

“What changed?”

Glenn just shrugs again. “I don’t know.”

Felix can’t help the laugh that slips out, barking and a little sarcastic. 

“No, really. I think… I think I just got sick of pushing people away. Max helped me figure out some stuff. She deserves better than a sad sack of shit for a dad. Maybe we all deserve a little better than we think we do.”

Felix feels his words like a punch to the gut, just as intended. They aren’t even talking about his stupid, unrequited crush problem anymore, but they _are,_ at the same time. Glenn always had a way of circling back around like this. Felix hates that his voice comes out shaky, a little wounded, but Glenn mercifully chooses not to comment.

“And you’re telling me all of this… why?”

“I don’t know. Just something to think about, I guess.” His brother turns to him, stubbing the second cigarette out. Felix belatedly realizes that his own has all but burnt to ash in his fingers. “Felix, I haven’t seen you that _happy_ about… anything, really, for a long time.” 

Felix swallows hard and averts his eyes from Glenn’s, who watches him for a long moment before turning back towards the warmth of the house. Light from the kitchen falls onto where he stands, breath puffing up in short little bursts. The scent of spicy peppercorn wafts through the half-open patio door, and Felix can hear the sizzle of meat and clatter of pans and Annie and Max’s voice harmonizing together in song. Glenn gives him one last long look.

“Text him back. Even if it’s just to break things off for good.”

_If ever I try to push you away_ _  
__You can just keep me there_ _  
__Just please say you’ll meet me_ _  
__Meet me halfway_

—

 _[Felix]:_ _  
__Yeah, actually. It’d be great if you could come by for one more session. Just a couple of hours._ _  
__Sent 10:03pm_

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__okay. just let me know when._ _  
__Sent 10:11pm_

 _[Felix]:_ _  
__I’m pretty busy this week. How does next Thursday sound?_ _  
__Sent 10:14pm_

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__thursday works great. see you then :)_ _  
__Sent 10:15pm_

_And I know we’re not the same as we were_ _  
__Used to be falling hard, but now it just hurts_

—

That single, tiny smiley face buoys Felix through the next week and a half.

The prospect of seeing Sylvain again twists anxiety and excitement through his stomach daily. It feels like he’s on a rollercoaster, swinging from butterflies to embarrassment to awkward anger every hour. He creates furiously, nothing worth keeping, but he’s unable to keep his hands still for longer than a few moments without feeling itchy with nervous, trembling energy. 

Felix paints with every shade of red: vivid cardinal mornings mixing dark into muddy garnet evenings, his canvas ablaze with dappled hues. Every single piece reminds him of Sylvain’s hair, of the freckles dotting his thighs, of the lean curve of his calves, of the two small white-pink circular scars on his forearms. He ends up painting over most of them in a fit of embarrassed shame and jamming the canvases in the corner, facing the wall.

Part of him hopes beyond hope that on Thursday they can just push past it: wipe both of their memories clean of the kiss on the sidewalk all those weeks ago and fall back into the rhythmic push-pull they’d gotten so comfortable with. Felix misses their banter, misses all the bad jokes passed back and forth, Sylvain flashing laughter with bright white teeth and a crooked dimple while Felix amusedly bites the inside of his cheek to hold in ugly snort-laughs. 

Unfortunately, it’s not the same.

It’s clear in the awkward way Sylvain holds himself when Felix opens up his apartment door after three solid knocks. The centimetres between them are an ever-widening chasm, unfamiliar and unnatural, so at odds with the way Sylvain’s greeted him in the past with a wide smile and a hug that envelopes him whole.

“Hi.”

Sylvain’s half-breathless from jogging up the stairs, a tentative, barely-there smile on his face. Felix immediately blushes, internally curses at himself, and opens the door wider to let him in. “I brought bagels.”

“Thanks.”

Felix takes the paper bag from him, deliberately careful not to brush his fingers against Sylvain’s. He sets two large coffee cups down on the counter carefully, billowing steam up towards them. Trout immediately runs up to Sylvain’s legs, meowing incessantly. _Little traitor._ Felix valiantly tries to fight the way his heart flutters at Sylvain’s fond chuckle that breaks the awkward silence as he hoists the cat up into his arms, a ball of delighted fur. Felix lost track of when Sylvain became one of Trout’s favorite people, but he can’t deny the tug on his heartstrings at the sight of them snuggling together.

They’re both quiet as Felix sets the bagels out on two plates, the only noise Trout’s incessant purring filling the space between them. They’re sesame and lox (his favorite) from Fairmount (also his favorite), Felix realizes, his heart sinking further into his chest when he connects the dots and realizes that Sylvain actually _remembered_ something as trivial as his preferred deli.

Felix swallows the anxiety rising in his throat and sets Sylvain’s bagel down on the counter to his right. Sylvain, for his part, looks grateful to have something to do with his hands, Trout drooling happily against his shoulder as he scratches between his ears.

“How have you been?” Felix asks. He thinks he does a pretty good job of maintaining a normal tone, all things considered. 

Sylvain sighs. He looks good _(he always looks good,_ Felix’s brain reminds him unhelpfully), if not a little tired: rumpled button down tucked into dark jeans, ruffled hair and slightly-unshaven beard. Felix tries not to think of how exhausted _he_ must look; the deep bruising circles beneath his eyes had been getting worse lately. At least he put a little effort into his outfit today (definitely _not_ in an attempt to impress Sylvain): one of Annie’s a capella group shirts _(Major Treble-makers!)_ instead of his paint-stained turtleneck, clean black denim in favor of his usual leggings.

“I’m good. Yeah, I’ve been good.”

The way Sylvain’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes tells a different story, but Felix bites into his bagel and chooses not to comment. It reminds him of their first session all those weeks ago, when Sylvain had showed up to his doorstep late and smelling like late-summer citrus, before all the late night and early morning texts, before they’d spilled their favorite things and their past traumas.

“How’ve you been? How’s Max? Did she go on that field trip?”

Sylvain sounds… genuinely interested. Felix’s heart clenches just a little when he realizes that Sylvain remembered. (Of course he remembered, that’s what he does: keeps track of all the unremarkable details and holds onto them, just like Felix wants to hold onto his shoulders, run his hands through that shadow-stubble, lose himself in between the creases around his eyes.) Sylvain remembered: even in their tipsy haze, he’d remembered their mundane conversation about Felix’s niece and her upcoming field trip. 

God dammit. Felix is well and truly fucked, isn’t he?

“Max is great. They went to the firehouse just a few weeks ago.” Sylvain perks up around a mouthful of lox, raising an interested eyebrow up at him. Trout attempts to swipe at a dangling bit of salmon from where he’s perched on the counter, one paw pressed insistently against Sylvain’s shoulder. 

“My brother’s an emergency responder, his new boyfriend’s a firefighter and managed to get them a field trip there. Max hasn’t stopped talking about it since,” Felix explains, soothing the burn of words in his throat with a sip of scalding coffee. Talking about Max is easy and safe, and Felix feels grateful for the steady footing, for the lifeline Sylvain offered to him. It’s certainly more comfortable than talking about that god-awful kiss.

Sylvain laughs. Felix has a sinking feeling that it’s the first genuine emotion he’s shown, unguarded and unfettered, since he stepped foot into the apartment. “I bet! That sounds cool. I was always obsessed with astronauts growing up.” 

They finish off their bagels quietly, and while it’s not nearly as awkward as Felix had anticipated, it’s not quite comfortable either. Felix finds himself missing the energy of their previous sessions together: laughter and smiles given freely and easily while they traded their favorite albums over bagels and coffee; talking about everything and nothing while Felix carved Sylvain’s shape into cotton canvas with halcyon hues and attentive affection; the sun setting through the balcony door behind Sylvain’s profile, casting him in light so perfect Felix would never, ever be able to replicate its beauty.

And then the bagels are gone, and there’s nothing else to do but wipe his fingers on a napkin and crumple the wrapper into a little paper ball. Felix pretends not to notice when Sylvain sneaks Trout an extra piece of salmon, turning his face away to hide the curve of his smile. 

“Listen, Felix, I’m sorry about–”

Here it comes, the very last thing Felix feels like doing, reliving his rejection in real-time, scrutinized by Sylvain’s sharp gaze, equal parts discomfort and… regret? 

“No, no, it’s… It’s okay. We don’t need to talk about it.”

Now Sylvain’s got this look on this face, one that Felix can’t quite discern the meaning of, this carefully crafted mask he hasn’t seen before: jaw tensed, eyes flickering to a dim shutter. It hurts like a punch to the gut, this swift rejection that awakens something particularly painful inside, something that he’s managed to bury under years and years of demanding deliberate perfectionism from himself because nothing less will do.

“It’s fine,” Felix pushes, because he’s trying to convince himself just as much as he’s trying to convince Sylvain.

Sylvain’s jaw clenches for a brief instant before he turns away, lips parting in a barely-audible sigh. Felix feels stuck, unable to tear his eyes away from the fan of dark lashes fluttering heavy against the carve of soft cheekbones into downy ginger stubble. When Sylvain turns back and meets Felix’s gaze, his expression is one of passive resignation and something that feels a little too close to disappointment. Disappointed in – in what, exactly? Probably himself, for making the mistake of ever getting close to Felix in the first place. Probably Felix, too, for being too prickly and petulant, for just being the way he is.

“Okay, alright. It’s fine,” Sylvain agrees, and Felix exhales a shaky breath, because even if they both know it’s a lie, maybe it’s one they can both believe in, at least for the rest of the day.

Felix fiddles with his phone while Sylvain changes in the bathroom, unable to do much of use except scroll through potential playlists _(too melancholic? too flirty?)_ and shoot a quick text to Annie, who’d wished him luck earlier that morning with a long string of heart-eyes and fingers-crossed emojis attached.

“Same as before?” 

And there’s Sylvain, broad and stupidly handsome as ever, the familiar cotton robe tied loosely around his waist. Felix resists the itch to sink his fingertips into the waffle-knit fabric, to slip it off freckled shoulders, to unravel the sash from around Sylvain’s hips, because that would surely mean his undoing, too. 

Felix nods, and they move into their respective positions: Sylvain on the stool, Felix hidden behind the safety of the canvas propped up on his easel. His fingers tremble a little as he mixes paint together. He takes a deep breath and begins.

It takes two twenty-five minute rounds until Felix caves and breaks for a cigarette. He’s too tightly-wound, but so is Sylvain, muscles all tensed, hard lines that weren’t there before. Felix is really starting to regret the entire idea of ever asking for a last session when Sylvain joins him halfway through his second cigarette on the balcony, Trout draped loosely over one shoulder.

“Aren’t you freezing?” Felix can’t help but ask, because, yeah, it’s absolutely _frigid_ outside, but Sylvain doesn’t seem to notice as he looks fondly over the icy _ruelle verte_ below in nothing but that damn robe. Sylvain just shrugs back. 

“Not really. I run warm.”

Felix inhales, lets the smoke wash through him, blurring the harsh edge of his mood with deep breaths of cold air. It’s calming, grounding, even, being out here. The alley below is quiet; the cars two streets over muffled engines and white noise. Every day he’s thankful for the little balcony overhang that shields his crappy patio chairs from the snow.

“Suit yourself.” Felix thumbs ash into the little tray, eyes flicking up to catch Sylvain cocking his head to the side. _There’s_ that familiar, mischievous look that Felix is so accustomed to, sparkling mirth and fondness all laced up in one devastating smile that he buries into Trout’s fur. 

Maybe another session wasn’t really necessary, Felix muses once they’ve returned to the warmth of his apartment and Sylvain resettles himself onto the stool (he remembers the pose easily, thank God, because Felix feels like if he had to physically touch him, he might actually evaporate into dust upon contact). The painting is nearly finished, all the details charted in: it’s bright, colors more vivid than his usual work, though shadows lap around the edges of Sylvain’s feet and legs. His silhouette is turned away from the viewer, the line from shoulder to bicep all the way down to dangling fingertips sharp against muted greys, carmine cutting over one eye, a blurry pool of sheets tangled through his legs and slung around one muscled thigh. 

It’s decent – not incredible – but at least passable, though something still feels off and unfinished: a bruise left aching, a gutted space in his heart, because of course Felix couldn’t even get this right, conflating composition and form with the burn of hazel eyes on him, with the sound of Sylvain’s voice, soft leather and yearning, wrapping Felix up with unspoken, too-good-to-be-true affection.

Now, when he looks at it, Felix just feels hollow.

“You can relax your face, you know.”

Sylvain’s tensed jaw immediately slips into a sheepish grin. He breaks the pose, but Felix can’t help but smile back, soft and small and more than a little shy. 

“Sorry,” Sylvain offers, and there’s nothing Felix wants to do more than kiss that grin off his face, but the memory of Sylvain backing away from him on the sidewalk, disheartened and disappointed, fills his mind’s eye instead. _Fuck._

“It’s alright. I think we’re done, actually.”

“Really?” Sylvain’s beaming now, shrugging the robe back over his shoulders, stretching out the tense lines of muscle as he finally relaxes. “Can… Can I see?”

 _Shit._ Felix looks down at his canvas, fingertips stained every shade of orange and mauve. It barely holds a candle to the real Sylvain, standing in front of him, eyes sparkling. Felix panics. “Uh, I still have a couple of things to fix–”

He watches Sylvain’s face crumble minutely before he pulls his lips back into that smile, the disingenuous one. Felix immediately decides he hates it. Sylvain’s tone is bright, forced out and fake-cheery.

“Oh. Alright. No worries.”

“But– but you could see it at the gallery opening,” Felix stutters out, mind blank. Of course Sylvain wouldn’t want to come to the opening, because how painfully awkward would that be? The silence between them stretches on just a moment too long, so he scrambles to fill in the gaps, to end this godforsaken conversation. “If- if you want to.”

He’s starting to consider the logistics of melting into the floor or simply disintegrating into dust when Sylvain’s smile brightens, turns soft and real around the edges instead of hard plastic. “Am I invited?” 

Didn’t Felix _just_ invite him? He can’t help the short, breathless bark of a laugh from leaving his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, if you want to be.”

The look Sylvain gives him is the equivalent of a punch to the gut: sunshine incarnate, freckles turning up at the corners of his mouth, the glitter of starlight back in his eyes.

“Okay. I’ll see you there, then.”

_Never seen a face like yours_ _  
__I got it together, but my breath feels short_ _  
__I don’t wanna close the door_

—

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__hey. i just wanted to say… thanks, i guess, for letting me be a part of this whole project. it was a lot of fun. i liked getting to know you, and maybe i’m an idiot for thinking this, but i really do hope we can stay friends after all this._   
Sent 11:25pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, that sweet, sweet emotional constipation 😂
> 
> well, we're _almost_ at the end, friends! chapter five will be a bit of a monster, but rest assured i am working diligently on wrapping this up and giving sylvix the (happy!) ending they deserve ❤️
> 
> ty [levi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leviicorpus) and [cha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akhikosanada) for looking this over!
> 
> liked it? have a favorite part? leave a comment and/or hmu at [@cherryconke](https://twitter.com/cherryconke)!


	5. please be mine

_Is it alright to feel this way so early?_ _  
__And in my blood, all the sweet nothings,_ _  
__Falling in love over night_

_—_

“So,” Annette mumbles cheerfully around a mouthful of nails, “is _he_ coming?” She wiggles her eyebrows at Felix, who’s currently balanced precariously on a step-ladder borrowed from Glenn (or rather, borrowed from Holst, because there’s truly no universe where Glenn Fraldarius would ever own sensible household things, like power tools or ladders), trying (and failing) to wrestle with a level, a tape measure, and a pencil simultaneously.

“Who?” Felix asks, biting the inside of his cheek and not daring to look towards Annette, who definitely has that incredulously irritated look on her face – mouth half-open, brows furrowed, like she’s _this_ close to flicking him on the forehead. She probably is. He nudges the level a bit higher on the left side – finally perfect – and marks the freshly painted white wall with a clean pencil line.

It’s opening night, with six hours until the doors open, and everything, predictably, is absolute chaos. Ignatz has been an anxious mess all morning; he’d left an entire folio behind at the studio and had to frantically run back to grab it, and is only now starting to plot out his allotted wall space. Bernadetta is, as always, fretting – earlier it’d been about the layout and flow, but Felix has long since tuned her out, focusing instead on getting everything hung so he can go home and take a nap before a night of socializing, which will surely be, to put it lightly, _completely_ _fucking exhausting._

They’re making surprisingly quick progress (despite both Annette and Felix knowing next-to-nothing about basic power tools): this is the second to last painting to be hung.

 _“Sylvain,_ obviously!” Annette rolls her eyes at him and hands over a single nail and the small hammer (also Holst’s), trading it for the level. Felix squints and lines the nail up with the graphite dash, pinching it between two fingers. 

“Um–” Felix stalls between gentle taps of the hammer, checking to make sure the nail isn’t going in crooked. They’ve already made that mistake multiple times today, Felix wincing everytime they had to yank bent steel from the pristine walls. “I think so.”

Annette stomps her foot, just a little, on the ground. “Felix Fraldarius. What do you _mean,_ you _think_ so?”

Felix just shrugs in response and takes the last painting from Annie, who hands it up to him even as the expression on her face grows more and more annoyed. “How do you _not know?”_

As it turns out, Sylvain is just as good as Felix – if not better – at avoiding subjects he doesn’t want to talk about. Where Felix shuts down completely, Sylvain glosses it over with dulcet tones and _way_ too many emojis, but the effect is the same regardless: they hadn’t talked about the kiss, or that night at all, since the awkward last session in his apartment a month and a half ago.

Oh, they’d talked about plenty of other things – their text conversations had started up again, more tentative and less frequent than before, but Felix heard from Sylvain at least once a day, usually more. Things like _claude made me a café amore and it was actually pretty good,_ and _oil paint on sale at DeSerres, not sure if its ur brand or not tho_ and dozens of pictures of Goose wrapped in too-big sweaters. They haven’t made plans to hang out – not that Felix hasn’t thought about it, dreaming up excuses to ask Sylvain over and eventually shooting down every one of them.

Felix isn’t sure what their relationship could be defined as – friends, for all intents and purposes, but there’s still part of him that still, impossibly, hopes for something more.

So when Sylvain had texted him last night and asked _what r u doing tomorrow?,_ Felix had stared down at his phone incredulously and tapped out a million possible replies (ranging from _dying of embarrassment_ to _coming over and smacking sense into your stupid, beautiful face)_ – because despite everything, the butterflies had yet to disappear whenever he thought of Sylvain. Part of Felix miserably hoped that seeing him at the gallery show would put an end to whatever annoyingly persistent _chemistry_ they had. Maybe then he could move on with his life and stop daydreaming about mapping constellations of freckles with his fingertips and slow, sweet mornings filled with choppy red hair and laughter.

Or. _Or_ Sylvain would show up tonight, kiss him senseless, and mean it, this time. 

Felix would curl his palms around the rumpled cotton of Sylvain’s collar like smoke curls through his lungs, wrap himself around all of Sylvain’s soft edges; would weave his fingers through the empty spaces between Sylvain’s; would drag him back to his apartment in the shuttered streetlamp glow and push him up against the kitchen counter and indulge in all the things he’s ever dreamt about.

Yeah. Right.

Felix shrugs at Annette, because really, what else can he say?

“Well, I hope he comes. I want to meet him. And he _is_ kind of the star of the show.”

Felix huffs, cheeks flushing immediately. When he initially posted that flyer around campus, he hadn’t anticipated his collection (or his life, for that matter) to re-center itself around a single painting. It was _meant_ to be an addition, a lone figure amongst a sea of isolated landscapes, a metaphor for what Felix felt, at some level, as out of his reach: intimacy and human connection, isolated by the own walls he built up so well that nearly nobody (save for maybe Annette, bright and beaming in front of him) could break through. 

Sylvain had changed all of that, had crashed into his life with all the subtlety of a meteor striking earth – unavoidable and unforgettable, burning Felix when he tried to get too close.

The smile on Annette’s face turns devious. It’s her _I’m-up-to-no-good_ smile, and Felix, unfortunately, recognizes it immediately. “What? Am I wrong? I mean, I _have_ seen his–”

“An _-nie.”_ His cheeks are burning, he _knows_ it, can feel the flush hot across his face. Still, Felix avoids her face, knowing he’ll probably just burst out into laughter unfitting of a fancy art gallery like this. He steps forward to adjust the canvas until it’s hanging just right on the wall. 

“I know, ’Lix, I’m just _teasing.”_ Annette steps up next to him, sliding her arm in the crook of his elbow and leaning her cheek into his bicep. She’s the only one who’s ever been able to get away with cuddling up to him in public, and she knows it, exploiting that fact whenever possible. “It’s _art,_ it doesn’t _count.”_

Felix can’t help but snort, leaning into her touch. “C’mon. We still have one left to hang.”

—

They fall asleep sprawled on his couch later, curled up around one another like two friends do when they drift off to bad reality TV reruns together in the middle of the afternoon: Annette’s feet shoved up against Felix’s chest, Trout drooling contentedly across her shoulder, a blanket thrown over their tangled mess of limbs. Felix blinks the sleep from his eyes and rolls onto his side to grab his phone from where it’s slipped off the sofa. His alarm hasn’t gone off yet, but it’s close. _4:38pm._

He flicks over to his messages. The most recent ones sum up the short list of the people he cares about most:

 _[Ingrid]:_ _  
__i’ll be there at 7, bringing ashe too._ _  
__Sent 1:25pm_

 _[Glenn]:_ _  
__Great. Max can’t wait_ _  
__Sent 10:31am_

 _[Annie]:_ _  
__come outside!!! i’m downstairs!!!!!!!_ _  
__Sent 7:19am_

And then, from last night:

 _[Sylvain]:_ _  
__sweet, sounds good!_ _  
__Sent 12:52am_

No _I’ll see you there_ or _I’m looking forward to it_ or confirmation of any sort that Felix could expect to see his face tonight. His stomach sinks at both possibilities: that Sylvain _won’t_ show up, and Felix will spend all night searching for his face in the crowd, antsy and overwhelmed; or that Sylvain _will_ show up, his dazzling smile and starry freckles outshining everything in the room, including Felix’s own replication of him, carved out in fuzzy brushstrokes against canvas. At the moment, he can’t decide which one he’d prefer.

Felix stares blankly at the message thread until his alarm goes off, not even attempting to type a new text (what would he say without coming off as desperate? _see you tonight?),_ and the bright chime signaling 5:00pm coincides with when his nerves start to kick in and ramp up.

The moments start to blur together in slow-motion: one minute he’s crawling out from under Annette’s legs and dragging himself to the shower; the next, he’s slipping on the outfit they’d picked out earlier – a simple, dressed-up version of his everyday uniform, sleek black all over, but without any holes in the knees or paint staining the hems. 

Felix feels himself grow quieter and quieter as Annette brushes through his hair in his bathroom, twisting it into a sleek, high ponytail that waterfalls down his back, hanging long and straight between his shoulder blades. He fingers the split-ends and frowns at his reflection in the mirror: lack of sleep has carved his usual dark circles even deeper, and the past two weeks pulling all-nighters aren’t doing his skin any favors, but he looks… fine. Maybe good, even.

Annette, as always, is the one to break him out of his rapidly declining mood, artfully brushing her fingers through his choppy bangs in a futile effort to get them to lay perfectly mussed. “Don’t worry, ’Lix. Tonight’s gonna be great! I _promise.”_

Felix swallows down his nerves, rising thick and fast in his throat. He thinks of his phone, where Sylvain’s last text hangs, a simple statement of fact that’s just raised more questions than answers. He thinks of his art, and all the painstaking hours he spent absorbed in each piece in the quiet solitude of his apartment with only Trout and sometimes Sylvain for company. He thinks of crimson sunsets sinking over winter skylines and Sylvain’s body, silhouetted in a golden glow against the window panes, unknowingly carving out a distinct space for himself in Felix’s life.

He thinks of Sylvain’s lips pressed to his. A fleeting, chapped mistake.

“Uh-huh. Yeah.”

—

“This is _amazing,_ Felix!”

Ashe’s voice, earnest and bright, cuts through the murmuring crowd. Opening night is already in full-swing when he and Ingrid show up, their cheeks flushed rosy from outside. Felix is barely half of one of those tiny plastic cups of wine in, but he already feels a little dizzy from the sheer number of people crammed into the space, and it isn’t even seven yet.

Everyone, miraculously, managed to pull it together after he left that afternoon: the gallery has been transformed, four winding rooms of white walls and smooth concrete floors turned into a thoughtfully laid out (if not slightly hastily assembled) senior gallery show.

Ignatz’s pieces are all hanging, spaced evenly, not a single one crooked – most likely accomplished by his burly sweetheart of a boyfriend, Raphael – and he’s been beaming in the corner all night, rambling passionately about the meaning behind each flower in his still lifes to whoever will listen. 

Felix thinks Bernadetta’s collection might be his favorite out of the eight of theirs: flinty gouache glazes that capture the looming dread of anxiety uncannily well. All of her pieces are massive, caliginous skies over open windows and violent storms that fill the periphery of Felix’s vision. He hasn’t seen her all night – probably hiding out on the back patio filled with the gallery’s collection of permanent sculptures and hazy curls of cigarette smoke. Felix can’t say he blames her.

Annette’s been flitting around the room since the whole thing started, making conversation with the other artists over the refreshment table, a burst of bright, bubbly color among the largely monotone crowd, before checking back in with him, looping an arm through his elbow and flashing one of her winning smiles at whichever stranger (potential buyer, benefactor, student, or curious passerby who happened upon the free hors d’oeuvres and wine) Felix is currently engaged in conversation with. When she finds him next, it’s with Ashe and Ingrid in tow behind her.

“Thanks, Ashe.” Ashe beams at him and wrangles him into a one-armed hug.

“You didn’t tell me there was food here,” Ingrid says in lieu of a greeting, squeezing him into a quick hug as her eyes track a paper plate moving throughout the crowd, piled high with crudités and canapés. Felix rolls his eyes and just points her in the direction of the next room where the platters of snacks live. She grins and pats him on the cheek fondly as she brushes past; they’ll probably catch up at some point later tonight, when Ingrid isn’t starving and Felix isn’t a wound-up mess.

Felix scans the room for the hundredth time that night, eyes raking across each head for that telltale shock of red. No luck. His heart sinks a little bit lower in his chest. _Fuck._

“Is Sylvain coming?” Ashe asks, curious as ever.

“Uh–”

He’s distracted by a small but firm tug on the hem of his turtleneck, an excited squeal lost in the ambience of a dozen nearby conversations humming bright and boisterous around them.

“Fe–Fe!”

Max laughs, high-pitched bells tinkling in his ear as Felix lifts her up and slings her around his hip. Tiny hands curl around his shoulders, pressing warm against him, and she promptly smacks him on the cheek with a kiss. Felix can see Ashe slipping away in the corner of his vision, borne away by the shifting crowd and pulled into Annette’s orbit, mouthing _catch you later_ back at him; Felix manages a grateful smile back, preoccupied with his niece. 

“Hey, princess. Long time no see.”

Max wrinkles her nose, pouting. “I’m not a _princess,_ I’m a _firefighter.”_

Felix grins at her – it’s probably the first real smile he’s cracked all night, now that he thinks about it – but immediately gets distracted by the arrival of Glenn and Holst. His brother almost disappears in the crowd, but Felix would be able to spot that cotton-candy pink hair from across the room. It’s not exactly inconspicuous, but Holst looks – frustratingly, like he always does – at ease here, carrying a small bouquet of sunflowers, one arm looped around Glenn. 

“Hey, Fe.” Glenn greets him with a quick hug. Max laughs, sandwiched between them. “This is pretty wild, huh?”

Felix cracks a small smile. It _is_ pretty wild. Maybe tomorrow, the fact that he’s finally done – with school and his degree, with the collection he’s put more work into than anything he’s ever done in his entire life – will fully sink in. Tonight, he’s still riding the whirlwind adrenaline high of his work finally being on display, of all his friends and family together in one place to support _him._

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s finally done.”

Glenn’s mouth twists into a soft smile. “Mom would be so proud of you.”

It’s something his brother has only said a handful of times in his life: when Felix moved away from everything he’d ever known up to Montreal; when he’d been accepted into the highly competitive art program at the University; when Felix had introduced Glenn to the small group of friends he’d somehow accumulated his freshman year. 

There’s melancholy in his brother’s words, but sharp honesty, too – Glenn is the last person Felix knows who would tell a lie just to make someone feel good. Still, Felix doesn’t know how it makes him feel, an uncomfortable twist of competing emotions rising in his gut. He’s a little shocked and a lot embarrassed to find prickly heat gathering in his cheeks, a jumble of emotions threatening to spill over in tears like they did so often when he was younger.

“Stop that. You’re being embarrassing.” 

Glenn smirks. _Smug bastard._ “That’s my job.”

Felix turns to greet Holst, only a little distracted by Max hanging onto his shoulder, who’s busy separating out different handfuls of his ponytail into – presumably – a tangly braid. 

Felix has warmed up considerably to Holst over the months he’s been around. There’s something comforting about being in his presence – once Felix got used to that booming, genuine belly-laugh and the borderline offensive amount of affectionate touches shared between him and Glenn. Holst had fallen into place with Glenn and Max like he belonged there all along, woven into the flow of their lives easily. Felix might’ve grumbled and protested at the beginning, but the steady stream of home-cooked meals and the way Max has him completely and totally wrapped around her finger won Felix over much quicker than he’d ever admit.

“Thanks for coming. And for letting me use your ladder.”

Holst grins back at him, handing over the little bundle of sunflowers, wrapped in paper and tied with a red ribbon. Felix juggles them in the hand that isn’t bearing Max’s weight against his hip. “Hey, don’t worry about it, I’m happy to help. And here, Max picked these out.”

Felix turns to Max, who hides a smile in his shoulder. “Yeah? How did you know these are my favorite?”

She giggles. “You _told_ me, Fe-Fe.” 

Glenn’s looking around, craning his neck to try and see over the shoulders of the people packed in around them. Felix is pretty sure he’s on his tiptoes. “Where’s yours?”

“In the last room.” Felix turns towards Max, readjusting her in his arms before she gets bored and squirmy, as six-year-olds tend to do. “Hey, Max, wanna go look at some pictures?”

She beams back at him. “Yeah! I wanna see yours!”

Felix has always been a little amazed at how quickly Max’s bright joy can turn his mood around and tonight's no different. “We’ll save those for last, okay?”

It takes some careful maneuvering, but Felix leads the four of them through to the next room, weaving around little groups of people gathered in front of different pieces. It’s still crowded here, though a bit quieter, the crowd’s chatter dulled to a low hum. Felix hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he inhales deep, the clearer air a welcome reprieve from the crowded foyer.

He can see Byleth in the corner, slowly working their way through what’s left on the appetizer table. Glenn and Holst trail behind him, getting distracted from the art right off the bat to say hello to Ingrid, who’s (unsurprisingly) _also_ preoccupied loading up a tiny paper plate with as many olive skewers and miniature flatbreads as it can possibly hold. Felix continues ahead, eager to steal some time away with Max.

They tour the room, the heavy weight of her head resting comfortably against Felix’s shoulder. Once they’ve made a single loop and returned back to the first piece, Felix nudges her gently. “So, what do you think? Have any favorites yet?”

“Hmm.” Max taps her finger to her lip, thinking on it. “No. Not yet.”

Felix laughs at her bubbly honesty. “Okay, then. More?”

“Yeah!”

They leave Glenn and Holst behind and round the corner into the next room. Max immediately points to one of the larger canvases hanging across from them, her other hand curling to tug excitedly on his ponytail. Felix winces. 

“Ooh! That one!”

It’s one of Ignatz’s pieces: a realistic oil painting of one of the many stray cats of Montreal’s back alleys, lounging lazily in a sliver of sunlight across cobblestone stairs. His attention to detail is unparalleled – it could almost be a photograph. Felix steps around the shuffle of the crowd until they’re standing up in front of it. He watches the delight unfurl across Max’s face as she studies the painting.

“Yeah? What do you like about it?”

It’s a game they play during their weekly dates. Whether it’s going to see a movie, or an exhibit at one of the city’s many museums, or a trip to the aquarium, they’ll always share their favorite parts about whatever they did over ice cream cones afterwards. Max’s favorite zoo animal is the baby giraffe; Felix likes the tigers. She loved the butterfly house at the science center; he lingered way too long in their temporary exhibit on medieval weaponry.

“I like the colors.” Max hums, twirling a finger through his hair. “And the mama cat.” 

Felix squints at the painting. There’s only one cat. “How do you know it’s a mama cat?”

Max shrugs, like it’s obvious, and Felix is the one missing the point. “She looks like one. She looks nice.” 

Felix laughs. “Fair enough.”

They continue through the room like this, picking out their favorite parts of paintings that Max is drawn to, Felix leading the way. It’s nice to escape the crowds and the mingling, the overwhelming pressure of _oh-god-could-this-stranger-be-a-future-commissioner_ replaced by Max’s wide smile and delighted laugh. Felix is surprised to find that he’s actually, genuinely _enjoying_ himself.

That is, until they reach the last room, and Felix sees _him._

Sylvain’s hair is unmistakable from the doorway, a shock of disheveled crimson standing tall over the rest of the crowd. His hands are jammed in the pockets of his jeans, face full of sincerity as he examines the painting in front of him – Felix can’t see it from here, but it’s probably one of Bernadetta’s pieces, based on where he’s standing. Butterflies erupt full-bloom in his stomach, anxious flutters that ricochet through him rapidfire, making his head spin. Sylvain’s here. Sylvain _came._

Felix’s heart stops in his chest when he realizes that Sylvain is just a few paintings away from the start of his collection. _Shit._

He nearly collides into a stranger when he pivots on his heel back into the room they just came from, scanning the crowd for Glenn and Holst.

“Fe-Fe, I wanna go in _there,”_ Max pouts, frowning at their sudden change in direction.

“We will, let’s grab a snack first and find your papa, okay?” Felix improvises wildly, grateful when she nods happily and curls into his shoulder. 

It doesn’t take very long to find Glenn and Holst: they’re still hanging out with Ingrid around the trays of food, smoked-salmon bites now replaced with decadently decorated cookies. Max slips out of his arms to run straight to the side of Holst’s leg, who grins widely and swings her up into his broad arms.

“Having fun?” 

Max nods, eyes drawn like magnets to the tray of sweets. “Mhm. Can I have a cookie?”

It’s the perfect, distracted moment for Felix to slip away, touching Glenn’s shoulder and muttering _saw a friend, catch up with you later–_ as he brushes past, heart thundering roaring waves in his chest. 

Felix had done a pretty decent job the last few hours of convincing himself that Sylvain wasn’t going to show up. (He hadn’t, not really, heart still jumping to his throat whenever he saw anyone who remotely resembled Sylvain.) He resigned himself to tomorrow morning’s apology text of whatever excuse Sylvain dreamt up in lieu of his presence. He fully accepted that he’d go home tonight feeling hollow, would fall asleep curled up alone beneath his covers like he does every night. It almost felt safe, _comfortable,_ even, to build his walls back up and shield himself in the pretend bliss of apathy and non-emotion.

But seeing Sylvain had, somehow, shattered it all over again. It’s annoying, the effect Sylvain has on him. Felix doesn’t dream about the future, he doesn’t get heartsick over the sight of someone across a room. He doesn’t _yearn,_ or _want,_ or _crave_ like this. 

Sylvain, though? Sylvain is different.

Felix takes a deep breath. It feels like it takes him ages to cross the room, like the universe is playing cruel tricks and spinning up entire galaxies that stand between them, and Felix has to move through each of them, each breath providing less oxygen than the last. The people and the paintings in his periphery melt away into cool nothingness until Sylvain’s freckled face is the only thing that exists, until time speeds up again all at once, until Felix is just a few steps away, and–

When Sylvain turns and catches sight of him, his face cracks into a wide, blinding smile that bleeds sunlight into Felix’s very soul.

“Hey.”

_I’m afraid of pain,_ _  
__Both yours and mine,_ _  
__Both yours and mine_ _  
__I’m afraid of pain,_ _  
__From where it comes,_ _  
__And where it falls_

_—_

This time, Sylvain makes _sure_ he isn’t late.

He spends all day in a keyed-up, wired state of weird energy, pacing back and forth across the apartment until Claude unceremoniously tugs him out of the front door for a run – a long one, all the way down to the canals, keeping easy pace together until they’re both drenched in cold sweat, steam puffing out their mouth and noses in the thawing spring air. They rest against the wrought-iron railing overlooking the water, Sylvain enjoying the bite of cold metal against his forearms as he stretches out his calves.

“So? Are you going tonight?”

Sylvain turns to Claude, who’s crouched down, busy re-tying the laces on one of his trainers. 

“I…” He trails off, because the thought of _not_ going hadn’t really occurred to him. Despite everything – all the awkwardness, the fleeting shared looks and one badly-judged kiss – Felix had invited him. He’d even smiled when he’d done it. Which meant he wanted him there… right?

God, Sylvain is probably, most definitely, overthinking this.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“You should,” Claude says, as if it’s that simple. “Why not? It’s like last year’s show, yeah?”

Memories of the two of them getting drunk off free wine and full of free cheese bubble up in Sylvain’s mind. He nods back, sighing out into the air overlooking the canal. It’s the first nice day in at least a month, scattered clouds breaking up the rays of weak early spring sun, and the wide paths paved against the edges of the canals are spilling over with joggers with strollers and dogs barking to the tune of bicycle bells. The city feels like it’s finally awakened from the cool slumber of winter, and the fresh air helps Sylvain feel a little bit more sane.

“It’ll be crowded. You can always slip out if you need to.”

Claude’s smiling at him, the same easy one he has when he’s thought out every potential possibility and covered all his bases. Like tonight could not just go _okay,_ but _well._ Great, even. In Sylvain’s dreams it ends with a redo of their kiss all those weeks ago, one where Felix presses back up into him and Sylvain sips soft sighs from the sweetness of his mouth; one where his fingers cup around Felix’s cheeks, flushed peach like warm summer nights; one where Felix’s hands weave lace through the curls of his hair like they’ve always belonged there.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe you’re right.” 

Claude grins back at him, cheeky as ever. The pace he sets as they loop back home is slow, more of a cooldown than a proper jog. It gives Sylvain time to think, to breathe.

“I try to be. I could come with, if that helps.” 

“Nah, that’s… that’s alright. I should go alone. And _you_ should enjoy your date.” Now it’s Sylvain’s turn to tease back at him. Things have been going surprisingly smoothly with Dimitri – he and Claude spend most nights together, and Sylvain has quickly become accustomed to coming back to the apartment to the two of them comfortably tangled together on the couch.

Claude smiles. “We’re staying in tonight. Gotta catch up on _The Bachelorette.”_

“Ah, right. The _‘pinnacle’_ of trash TV. I don’t understand why you won’t watch _Love Island_ instead.”

They bicker the pros and cons of each show the entire jog home. It feels good, in a familiar sort of way, something to take the hamster-wheel of his mind off of tonight.

But then the minutes start sliding by, blurring together in nerves and restlessness, and Sylvain finds himself standing in the shower, zoning out at the tiled walls as he thinks about Felix’s hair, falling in his face, and Felix’s hands, perpetually speckled with paint, and Felix’s heart, laid bare in his mother’s painting hanging outside of his bedroom and in every photo of him and Max laughing together.

Then an hour passes, and another, and suddenly Sylvain’s changed outfits at least five different times, trying to gauge Felix’s potential reactions to each in the mirror – he’d almost complimented the white button-down once before, a casual _keep that on_ when he’d asked Sylvain to sit up against the kitchen counter, half-unbuttoned with the collar tugged off his shoulder. Would it be too much, too obvious, too flirty? 

Time keeps escaping him until he’s locking the apartment door behind him, and swiping his metrocard at the turnstile, and tapping his foot nervously against the plasticky floor of the subway car, fingers drumming restless patterns on his knee. The walk from the station to the address pulled up on his phone is twenty minutes, but that slips away, too, until he can see bright light and hear the laughter spilling out onto the chilly sidewalk from the double-doors flung wide open, bathing the ancient brick in warmth and noises of gallery-goers enjoying themselves. Sylvain passes a tented sign on the way in: _student gallery opening – tonight – wine + charcuterie – free to public._

It’s a nice space, especially considering it’s being rented for a student show. The sprawling maze of white-walled rooms and high, exposed-beam ceilings take up the entire first floor of a trendy converted warehouse, with studio lofts upstairs and a sculpture garden dripping with brick and ivy to the side and grey-blue currents of the Lachine canal drifting lazily out front. 

Sylvain pauses at the front steps and checks his phone. _7:26pm._

The event is in full swing when he steps inside. Almost every coat hanger is heavy with winter wool, and there’s a spindly table in the entryway stacked with thinly bound programs, _Lovely Dark_ emblazoned on the front in bold letters. Sylvain thumbs through one until he reaches the last page: _Felix Fraldarius, Senior, Bachelor of Fine Arts, specialization in Painting and Drawing._ There’s a tiny thumbnail of him next to his biography, the edges half-blurred by a printer ink smudge as he looks into the camera, eyebrows raised with a tiny smirk twisted on his face, the metal of his septum ring catching the glare of the shuttered flash. Sylvain can almost imagine him saying _are we done yet_ to the unfortunate headshot photographer in that smoky, rough tenor, sharp and beautiful in his impatience.

He keeps an eye out for Felix as he walks through the space, lingering behind different groups of parents and partners and friends, content to let the natural ebb and flow of the crowd push and pull him through a loop of each room. Sylvain can’t help but be distracted, his eyes not drawn to the painstakingly crafted paintings but instead gravitating towards every whirl of dark hair he catches in his periphery, every velvety laugh he picks up in the corner of each room. 

Sylvain doesn’t find him, but he _does_ catch sight of the professors – Byleth and Hanneman are both hovering around the snack table, caught up in a conversation with a woman draped in layers of rich black linens and soft leather, who looks, to put it plainly, _important_ in the way that figures in the art community tend to – eccentric and semi-pretentious. Byleth smirks and half-wiggles their fingers over at him, which he returns with a sheepish smile and a wave before slinking into the next room. It’s for the best, really, because he doesn’t exactly feel like explaining why he’s here to his boss, or the fact that one of the nude paintings hanging on one of the walls is actually of _him._

Anxiety crests a slow, rolling wave in his stomach as the minutes tick on and he doesn’t see Felix in the first handful of rooms. He doesn’t have to check the artist’s statements on any of the pieces he passes – he instinctively knows they’re not Felix’s. The colors are too drab, the brush strokes too sloppy, the shadows missing that level of depth Sylvain’s come to associate with Felix’s work. They’re lovely, sure, but they aren’t his.

But then Sylvain rounds the corner into the last room, and he’s immediately drawn to a canvas that takes up almost an entire wall: a wash of grey-blue waves capped in white, so large it encompasses the entirety of his vision as he approaches, wrapping him up in the soft, familiar blur of the Atlantic ocean at sunset, whirling charcoal-greys swallowing up the edge of where the sky meets the sea. He’s hit with melancholic nostalgia, a fuzzy memory-turned-daydream with a bittersweet twist. 

When Sylvain puts two and two together and realizes that it’s a version of Felix’s mother’s painting, the one hanging by the bay window, but missing the colorful smudges of him and his brother and their bright coats running along the rocky shore, his heart shatters into a hundred, thousand, million splintered shards. 

He takes his time moving through this room, drawn to each of Felix’s paintings like a moth to a flame, studying each detail. They’re all _Untitled_ s, variations on the same heartbreaking, dark landscapes, and for a moment Sylvain thinks that maybe Felix removed the portraits from his collection completely, had stricken Sylvain from his life and his art and his heart in one fell swoop, when he turns to look at the only other wall he hasn’t visited yet, and:

There’s Felix, so close Sylvain swears he can smell the woodsy spice of his shampoo and count each individual eyelash as they sweep across the flushed pink of his cheeks, his mouth twisted into a nervous half-smile Sylvain’s come to associate with _fondness_ and _sarcasm_ and _Felix,_ but maybe _relief_ above everything else, and all at once, Sylvain lets out a long exhale. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Felix’s blush, somehow, deepens even more, a subtle coral that’s spread all the way to the tips of his ears. He clears his throat, eyes flicking away for the briefest of moments before settling back on Sylvain’s face. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for the invite.” Sylvain can’t help but ruffle his hair through his fingers, anxious for something – anything – to do with his hands. “These are all amazing, Felix.”

Felix starts to scoff, but Sylvain cuts him off in time. “No, I mean it. Your collection is incredible, I…” 

_I love it,_ he wants to say, but they both fall quiet, eyes torn away from each other and drawn to the painting they’re in front of: another landscape, awash in cool purples, ochre sunrise bleeding into the cloud’s edges and refracting white off the water.

“Have you seen it?” Felix asks, so quietly Sylvain could’ve dreamt it. He can feel his pulse thundering in his throat, concealing the way his hands tremble by pushing them back into his pockets, when he shakes his head _no._

Sparks ignite in Sylvain’s head and heart when Felix catches his wrist in the bony cage of his fingers and pulls him across the room like it’s nothing, like they haven’t spent the past four weeks dancing around each other, like Sylvain hasn’t carefully read and re-read each text he’s sent and received with utmost consideration, searching for the subtext of validation he’s been craving since they met. The room has somehow filled up in the few moments they’ve spent together, forcing them to weave through tightly-packed bubbles of people, Sylvain filling in the gaps left by Felix’s body pushing through with _pardon_ s and _excusez-moi_ s.

They emerge out on the other side of the crowd, and the hot brand of Felix’s hand around his wrist drops off and fades away, but that doesn’t matter, not really – not when Sylvain’s heart fills to the brim with a flurry of emotion and all his breath leaves his lungs for the second time that night.

Sylvain recognizes the colors first, forever stained on Felix’s fingertips and the hems of his shirts. Orange-vermillion, smeared through Felix’s hair that one time he’d pushed his bangs out of his eyes and Sylvain noticed it during a break with a laugh, trying to focus on scraping the dried pigment from the dark strands between his fingertips and _not_ the way Felix’s eyes crinkled up at the corners as he tried to suppress a smile. Warm cream, the color of Sylvain’s coffee drinks, laced with too much milk and too much sugar and Felix’s teasing laughter at how too-sweet it is. Cotton-candy pinks and lavenders, the color of winter sunsets far too early in the day to be reasonable, sunlight splashed across Felix’s face through wide bay windows turning the melted copper of his gaze liquid gold.

And red: in the carmine waves tumbling around his face, rumpled with sleep; in his lashes, fanned out in flumes of auburn, blurring peach where they kiss the freckles stippled across his cheeks; in the midwinter glow silhouetting the curves of his body, wrapped up in soft brushstrokes and Felix’s careful attention.

The painting is, if Sylvain’s being honest, an outlier: rose-colored warmth in comparison to the muted grey-blues of all of Felix’s other pieces, and maybe Sylvain’s biased, but it somehow _works,_ the absence of all human form in the previous landscapes starkly highlighted in the arch of his foot and the crease of his elbow, propped up on one knee.

Sylvain can _feel_ the burn of the pose in his calves and his arms when he looks at it, the stress he carries in his jaw in the way his head tilts away from the viewer, the jut of his nose contoured in pale ochre light streaming through the backlit window. There’s the barest hint of a smile on his face, and Sylvain immediately recognizes it for what it is: the look he shot Felix a hundred times across the room when he thought he wasn’t looking.

Sylvain’s never, _ever_ seen himself like this: soft and vulnerable, with every wall he’s ever built up torn down. It should ache, should burn, should _hurt,_ being put on display like this, stripped down and laid bare for a roomful of strangers. But something shifts, deep in his chest, the pieces of everything he’s ever felt falling together to make his heart the closest thing to whole it’s been in a long, long time.

When he finally turns to Felix at his side, his eyes are a little wet, but he can’t find the strength to be embarrassed. Felix’s expression remains passive, but he must see something in Sylvain’s face, because his voice breaks a little when he asks, quiet and small: “What do you think?”

It’s a loaded question, one Sylvain doesn’t have the answer to. _I think I might love you._

Instead of trying to find the right words, or saying the first ones that come to mind, he steps a little closer. Felix shuffles into his orbit as though he’s inexorably pulled there, close enough for the toes of their shoes to touch. In that moment, his unreadable expression finally breaks, brows furrowing together like he’s trying to figure Sylvain out. There’s something desperate and wanting in his eyes, something Sylvain is sure lives in his gaze, too.

“I think,” Sylvain says, and he considers his next words carefully, because this could go all kinds of wrong or so, so, right – but the way Felix looks up at him, like this is something he’s hoped for, too, makes the decision for him. “I really, _really_ want to kiss you right now.”

He studies Felix’s expression, more beautiful than any painting he’s ever seen, watching the way his eyes go a little wide and his lips part open. There’s no shock or disappointment this time around, just the proud bow of his lips melting into a softened smile that fills Sylvain with unfettered joy as Felix reaches up to drag a calloused thumb across Sylvain’s jaw.

“Then do it.” Felix says it like it’s a challenge. Maybe it is.

The world stops when Sylvain presses his lips against Felix’s. It’s nothing like that fated first kiss on the sidewalk all those weeks ago – this one is slow, almost tentative, Felix’s mouth melting in a sigh against his. Sylvain had always hated that cliché, back when he gave kisses freely and their meaning became cheapened with overuse. _How could a kiss make the world stop? That’s just cheesy, romantic bullshit._ It finally clicks for him when Felix’s tongue licks curiously against his lower lip, and the people, the paintings, the entirety of Montreal and everyone in it fades into meaninglessness. Felix’s thumbs stroke softly over Sylvain’s freshly-shaved stubble, more careful than he would’ve ever thought, like he’s something to be treated with gentle kindness, like he’s someone worth having and holding like this.

Sylvain kisses him back with all he’s worth, because Felix deserves more than poorly-timed, tipsy kisses, deserves more than being left alone in the middle of the sidewalk, deserves more than Sylvain could ever truly give him, full stop.

When they part, Felix’s lashes flutter open and his cheeks flush red, eyes sharp like honey-whiskey where they look up at him: not upset, not hurt, but _happy,_ of all things. Sylvain breathes in the air in the little space between them, warm where their breath mixes. He brings up a tentative hand to brush Felix’s bangs from out of his eyes, reveling in the softened sweetness.

 _Love, love, love,_ his heart thunders in his chest.

“God, Felix, I–”

“Fe?”

An unfamiliar voice cuts through the afterglow of the best kiss Sylvain thinks he’s ever had, just this side of too loud and bordering on shocked anger. Felix’s eyes flick over Sylvain’s shoulder, and then they’re widening and he’s pulling away. Sylvain finds himself already missing the warm weight of Felix in his arms when he turns around towards where Felix’s gaze is glued.

He _has_ to be Felix’s brother, Sylvain thinks, there’s just no way he isn’t – he’s a handful of centimetres shorter, but he has the same dark hair and sharp features as Felix. And he’s looking at Sylvain like he’s ready to run him through with a knife a couple dozen times.

“What the _fuck–”_ Glenn manages to spit out before his glare falters into shock and then confusion as he turns to Felix, all in such quick succession Sylvain barely has time to think, let alone react.

Felix, however, does. 

“Glenn, what are you _doing?”_ Felix hisses through his teeth in a half-whisper, shooting a nervous glare at the widening gap forming between the three of them and the rest of the crowd, the air filled with a nervous, wild energy entirely unbefitting of an art gallery. Glenn’s gaze flicks between Sylvain and Felix. The breath catches in Sylvain’s throat at the next broken half-sentence that comes out of his mouth.

“You’re not– Mik…” 

Felix narrows his eyes. He hasn’t put two and two together yet. “What are you–”

Sylvain gets it immediately, though. With his red hair and tall stature, sure, maybe from behind he could be mistaken for his brother on a bad day. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, but it hasn’t happened in years, and in the past, it’s never felt particularly good – a situation he’s always played off with a plasticky smile and a joke to relieve the tension. It definitely doesn’t feel particularly good now.

Glenn glares. All of a sudden, Sylvain doesn’t know how this could go more wrong.

“You thought I was Miklan?” he asks, heart sinking. And then, more importantly: “Wait, you know my brother?”

Glenn’s jaw sets into a hard line, the muscle there twitching. _“Knew_ him–” 

“What the _fuck_ is going on?” Felix looks between the two of them, his voice a furious whisper. “And can we _please_ go outside?” 

Sylvain falls silent and follows Felix as he slips through the crowd towards the back door, the chattering volume of the crowd around them slowly rising back up following Glenn’s outburst. His heart thuds dully in his chest, feeling like he’s woken up from the best dream of his life and catapulted straight into a nightmare. The healed scars on his forearm burn, pinpricks of phantom pain from when he was thirteen and he’d caught Miklan, fingers skittering nervously in their mother’s jewelry drawer, the first of many, many times he’d taken what wasn’t his to have, those two round cigarette burns proof of the punishment that Miklan had inflicted on him after, for Sylvain seeing what he wasn’t meant to.

The air outside is early-spring cold and crisp, the light breeze balmy and fresh. There’s only a handful of people in the sculpture garden, huddled up in groups, passing around cigarettes and plastic cups of the free gallery wine. Sylvain ignores the urge to slot Felix against his side to keep him warm when he notices him shivering.

“You’re Miklan’s little brother,” is the first thing out of Glenn’s mouth as he turns towards Sylvain, cutting and accusatory. Glenn’s lower lip curls, and Sylvain can’t say he really blames him, even missing the context of how they could ever possibly know each other. A little part of him withers, realizing that even in this new life he’s made for himself, the last, sad broken pieces of his family can still find him and haunt him.

“Yeah. I’m Sylvain Gautier.” Glenn’s eyes narrow at him, but that’s not what matters right now: Felix is looking at him with an expression that Sylvain can’t quite get a read on, though there’s some level of _heartbreak_ and _anger_ mixing in the tremble of his lower lip. “Why? How do you know him?”

“Did he never mention me?” Glenn wonders out loud. His laugh is just as barking as Felix’s, if not more: sarcastic and laced with a bitter edge. “I guess it makes sense, he rarely talked about you.”

Sylvain can feel the confusion pulling up his brows to knit together, and Glenn must see it too, because he sighs, features softening the tiniest bit. “I’m Glenn. Mik and I dated a… a long time ago.”

This is news to Sylvain, but it makes sense, in a twisted way: neither of them had shared their personal lives with each other after Miklan had moved out. When Sylvain was cut off from the neverending Gautier cashflow for bringing home his first boyfriend, he hadn’t thought to let his spiteful brother know. What had Sylvain expected? For Miklan to call him up, _hey, little bro, I have a boyfriend now?_

It should sting, this disconnect, but a sinking feeling floods his gut instead, because Sylvain knows firsthand what sort of pain his brother is capable of inflicting on the people unfortunate enough to get close to him.

“Oh,” is all he says. 

Felix turns to him, breath puffing up in little cloudbursts around his face, his cheeks pink from the cold as he hugs his arms tightly around himself. His tone is doubtful, like he can’t quite believe that of all the weird, fucked up coincidences that could occur in the world, they’re living the reality of this one. _“You’re_ related to _Miklan?”_

“Yeah. Unfortunately.” Now it’s Sylvain’s turn to laugh, short and bubbling with self-loathing he can’t quite contain behind a bitter smile. “I’m guessing you’ve met him too, then?” 

Felix shakes his head _no,_ but the look in his eye says that he knows enough, knows what sort of pain Miklan had been capable of. Sylvain’s heart _breaks,_ because just as he was finally starting to get things right, any chance he’ll ever have with Felix has dwindled down to nothing now. He’s still gripped by the urge to explain himself, that childish impulse that never quite went away as he tried, harder and harder as the years went on, to distance himself from the Gautier name.

“We don’t talk much anymore. At all, really.”

The look Glenn gives him is noticeably softer. Maybe it’s because of the way Sylvain’s voice cracks, or how his eyes keep sliding away to look over at Felix. “I…” Glenn clears his throat. His voice is quiet, eyes low. “I apologize for overreacting. I just thought you were him.”

“I get it.” Silence hangs in the air between the three of them. Sylvain feels like all the breath has been punched from his lungs, like the world has shrunken down to the stretch of brick patio they’re standing on and the weight of it rests on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, too.” _Sorry for whatever Miklan might’ve ever done. Sorry for everything I’ve put Felix through. Sorry for everything._

Felix won’t face him – he’s exchanging a long look with Glenn, something that conveys more meaning than words probably can. For a moment, Sylvain wonders what it would be like, to have a relationship like what they have. An ache blooms in the hollow of his chest – a small one, a reminder of what he’s lost. Of what Felix has lost to get here, too.

“I should get back to Max. Fe, I’ll see you inside.” Glenn’s hand squeezes into the top of Felix’s shoulder, a reassuring weight in spite of everything. Sylvain looks up, and Glenn looks at him for a long moment, the expression on his face inscrutable, before he dips his head in a nod. “Sylvain.”

They watch Glenn disappear through the door, back into the warmth and laughter. 

Sylvain doesn’t dare speak, just watches quietly as Felix takes out a pack of cigarettes and fumbles for a lighter. 

“Smoke?” Felix asks. 

“Yes, please.”

Things don’t feel _as_ broken as he thought they’d be, in part because Felix hasn’t run away like Sylvain thought he would – he’s just watching him carefully, breathing in the soft plumes of smoke billowing around them. Sylvain feels a little like he’s in the presence of a skittish animal, like one too-loud word or quick movement could startle him away forever. He leans in slowly, studying the flicker of concentration on Felix’s face as he lights Sylvain’s cigarette for him, hands cupped around the warm glow of flame before it sputters out.

It’s Felix, surprisingly, who breaks the silence first.

“I don’t really know what to say.”

Sylvain snorts. If that isn’t the understatement of the century. “Yeah. That makes two of us.”

A raucous burst of laughter floats over to where they’re standing against the weathered brick, a particularly funny joke from the group of students nearby. Strands of café lights overhead illuminate Felix in soft shades of warm yellow-orange. His mouth is folded into a small pout, brows a little furrowed, like he’s thinking hard about something.

Sylvain desperately wants to ask what’s on his mind; instead he says the first thing that comes to his: a bad attempt at covering up the awkwardness. “I don’t blame him. I’d probably do the same thing if I saw Mik.”

He inhales sweet chemical smoke. It tastes like Felix. “Is he… gonna be alright? I feel awful.”

Felix’s gaze softens into an almost-smile. “Yeah. He’s grown up a lot since then, I think. He might just take some time to warm up to you.”

Warmth blossoms in Sylvain’s stomach, flooding all the way to his fingertips as he lets himself consider the possibility of a future where he’s allowed in Felix’s life, where he knows Glenn and Holst, Max and Annette, not just as the small cast of characters playing out scenes in the background of Felix’s life, but as real people, as friends, as family. A world where he doesn’t just hear secondhand how Felix and Max’s ice cream date went, because he’d get to be there, get to live it right alongside them. A world where he could watch endless smiles curl across Felix’s face in real time; could brush messy hair from his eyes a hundred, million times; could gather him up in his arms and slot their hands together and cluster kisses across flushed peach cheeks and that sharp jawline and the shells of Felix’s ears.

Too bad Sylvain is so, _so_ undeserving of all that.

“You’re not like him, you know.” It comes out of Felix all at once, almost angry in it’s rushed ferocity, like he’s been working up to saying it this entire conversation.

Sylvain laughs. It’s a sad sound; he can’t quite keep the bitterness from seeping in. “Yeah, I’d like to think so, too.” 

To his surprise, Felix huffs, taking one last drag of his cigarette before crushing the butt beneath the heel of his boot. Sylvain watches the last few embers flicker and fade. Felix’s eyes burn brighter than ever. _“Idiot._ I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.” 

Felix steps a little closer, tilting his chin up. “You’re not your brother,” he says slowly, like he’s realizing the thought as the words slip from his mouth, soft and wondering. “No more than I’m Glenn. I won’t hold him against you.”

It hits exactly as intended: a punch to the teeth, or rather, to the softest, most vulnerable parts of Sylvain’s heart. He smiles weakly, letting his own half-finished cigarette drop to the brick below, toeing over the embers and ash blindly, unable to pull his eyes away from Felix’s gaze. “Hey, Felix?”

“What?”

Felix tilts his head to the side, lashes sweeping low across his cheeks. His septum ring catches in the low light, framing that lush pink pout, lips parted the tiniest bit. It’s completely self-serving, how badly Sylvain finds himself _wanting:_ wanting to live in the perfect fit of Felix’s body, curved muscle and sinew against his; wanting to be held by Felix, who’s so determined to see the good in him it almost hurts; wanting to take, take, _take_ and give Felix the world in return.

And because he’s nothing if not selfish, Sylvain asks: “Can I kiss you again?”

Felix pulls him closer, fingers curling into his collar to drag him down. The grin that unfurls, a ribbon of light across his face, lodges itself in Sylvain’s memory as the best sight he’s ever seen. Sylvain sips cigarette smoke and a sigh straight from Felix’s lips as he slips his tongue between his teeth and falls into him, hands pressing at the small of his back and the line of his jaw as Felix’s hands find their way around the back of his neck to settle there.

When they kiss, it feels like coming home. 

They’re both out of breath when Sylvain finally pulls away, but Felix doesn’t let him go far, pulling him back down to press their foreheads together. 

“I thought you hated kissing me,” Felix breathes out. 

“Felix,” Sylvain says, and his name tastes so sweet on his tongue, the fluttering _fe_ fluming phosphorescent into the rolling _lix._ He wants it stuck on loop there forever, wants to wake up singing it first thing in the morning and go to bed with it on his lips. “We were drunk, you didn’t kiss me back–”

“Because I was surprised,” Felix huffs, like it’s obvious. Maybe it was. Maybe Sylvain was too blinded by self-loathing, so convinced he’d fuck things up that he hadn’t noticed he’d manufactured his own failure, to see it. “I never thought that _you_ would want _me–”_

Sylvain can’t help but laugh, because the thought of it feels impossible – how could he not? Felix looks up at him, biting his lip, doubt playing across his face.

“Felix.” There it is again, just as sweet. Sylvain’s never going to get sick of it. “I’ve wanted you since the day we met in the café.”

Felix’s face falls, eyes shutting as he takes a deep breath and presses his nose beneath Sylvain’s chin. It’s, unsurprisingly, a perfect fit. Sylvain thrills at the feeling of his forehead and messy bangs against his lips, placing a soft kiss there as Felix breathes out against his throat, slow and a little shaky. 

“What the fuck.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain says, and it’s barely a whisper as he strokes across Felix’s cheek, thumbing his chin up to slot their lips together again. “What the fuck.”

Sylvain wonders if Felix can feel the fireworks, too, everytime their noses brush and they breathe in and out against each other; wonders if he can feel the sparks fly when Sylvain threads his fingers through the waterfall of his ponytail and when Felix’s hand strokes back and forth along his jaw. Sylvain doesn’t know if it happened between their third kiss or their thirteenth, but he’s pressed up against the building’s brick wall, Felix pinning him there with his arms anchored firmly around his shoulders like he’ll disappear if he lets go.

They separate for breath at the metallic click of the door opening, warmth and laughter spilling out into the garden. Felix steps back reluctantly, gaze flicking over to the stream of tipsy students chattering and lighting up cigarettes. His fingers brush at the watch around Sylvain’s wrist, twisting the sleeve of his sweater back to peer at the dimmed face of it. 

“It’s over in half an hour. I should say bye to everyone…” Felix mutters, even as he makes no move to leave and Sylvain continues to play with his hair, fingers trailing down the nape of his neck, mapping over the hills and valleys of his spine through his sweater. “Wait for me?”

_Always._

“Of course,” Sylvain says instead, pulling Felix into one more kiss, which turns into two, then five, then ten – clustering close-mouthed pecks all over Felix’s cheeks through a grin until Felix scowls, laughing when he finally slips out of his grasp.

—

Boldness suits him, Sylvain thinks, as Felix slips his fingers in the gaps between his on the walk to the metro station, their palms fitting together with all the clammy eagerness of two teenagers left alone together for the first time. Sylvain decides not to tease him about the blush blazing red across his cheeks to the tips of his ears, in case Felix decides to change his mind and pull away. Instead, he leans into Felix’s touch as they ride the seven stops north, soaking in the warmth of their hands pressed together.

 _(Do you want to come home with me?_ Felix had asked in a low whisper on the front steps, after he’d gathered his coat and the bundle of bouquets from where Annette had stashed them in her car, a handful of sunflowers and blooming daisies picked out by Max that Sylvain’s currently got tucked in the crook of his free arm. 

_Please,_ Sylvain said, his hands coming up to wrap around Felix’s cheeks again, once Felix had said all his _goodbye_ s and _thank you for coming_ s and the gallery doors had closed for the night. _Only if you want me to,_ he’d whispered into the curve of Felix’s neck, drunk off the closeness of him. _Yes,_ Felix murmured, between a flurry of kisses that left Sylvain breathless, _yes, yes, yes.)_

Felix pulls him out from under the bright florescent light of the subway car and up the station stairs, their hands only parting for the click of the turnstiles before finding each other again. Tonight’s shifted Sylvain’s world off-center, pulled into the smoky sunsets of Felix’s orbit – and maybe he’s just giddy with unbelieving joy, but he’s pretty sure Felix feels the same way, too. It makes them both bold, Sylvain’s laughter lost in the breeze that carries spilled liquor and stale cigarettes splashed along the pavement bordering a cluster of dive bars, and the scent of fresh-cut flowers when they pass by a flower shop, bougainvillea blooms spilling out onto the sidewalk, when Felix pulls him around the corner and into a late-night café for one last coffee. 

Sylvain steals kisses at the corner of Felix’s mouth all the while: while they wait for the green-blue luminescence of each _walk_ sign to illuminate their faces; in between sips of a scalding hot cup of drip Sylvain has no interest in drinking this late in the evening (or ever, really), but he tastes it all the same, those bitter remnants made sweet against Felix’s lips; while Felix reaches in his coat pocket for his keys, finally, finally managing to fumble the door open and pull Sylvain inside and up against the counter, like he’s been waiting for this, too.

Felix promptly pushes himself against all of Sylvain’s edges, breath fluttering hot against his neck as the paper coffee cup spills over to stain the counter, and his hands drag Sylvain’s face down into a thunderstorm of less innocent kisses, each one crackling lightning through all the places their skin touches, from Felix’s fingers winding through his hair and his thumb running a skittering path down the side of his neck, where Sylvain’s own palms find reverent redemption in the small of Felix’s back and the curved signature of his spine.

Sylvain knows where this is going, has done it dozens of times with dozens of people, intimately familiar with how things progress: they’ll make it to the couch, or if they’re lucky, to the bed. Felix will wiggle out of those stupidly tight jeans of his and Sylvain will spend all night mapping the curves of his body, learning how to coax all the best sounds from his lips. And in the morning, Sylvain will leave, like he’s learned to do, like he always does. 

This time, though, he doesn’t want that. 

“Hey, hey,” Sylvain breathes once they break away, pulling back from Felix’s mouth. It’s dizzying, being so wrapped up in Felix he can barely think, especially when he’s slotting a slim thigh between Sylvain’s legs and tangling his hands through Sylvain’s hair. 

“Yeah?” Felix is nervous, full of jittery energy he tries to mask with another sloppy kiss, but Sylvain catches his cheek in the palm of his hand, slowing him down and holding him there until Felix’s eyes finally flicker to meet his and don’t look away.

“Can we slow down?” 

The words feel clumsy on his tongue. It’s a question he’s never asked before, not in all his years of experience messing around – forever content to let his partner call the shots, resigned to providing a night of pleasure and never asking for anything in return. Felix’s brows crease, face falling in something that looks close to disappointment, stung with Sylvain’s rejection.

“It’s not– it’s not that I don’t want to.” Felix’s eyes glow bright amber in the darkness of the kitchen. Neither of them bothered to flip the lights on when they tumbled through the door, fumbling around in the dimness of the streetlights filtering through the windows. “God, Felix, I do, _so_ much, but I... I don’t have a great track record of starting things off fast like this and them ending well.”

Sylvain pulls back, watching the careful shifts of Felix’s expression: eyes narrowing, then softening, his lips falling open in what sounds like an almost-relieved sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

Felix shuffles a step away, and Sylvain immediately misses the warmth of him against his chest. He doesn’t try to pull him back, but he doesn’t move to leave, either. 

It’s a scary feeling, choosing not to run away.

“I can still spend the night,” Sylvain offers quietly, like it’s not everything he’s ever wanted. “We don’t have to do anything. Just talk, or sleep.”

Felix looks at him and nods. 

Trout keeps him company as he waits for Felix on the couch, curling up on his lap the minute he falls into the cushions. Felix takes his time changing into pajamas, filling Trout’s water dish and turning on slow music that fills the apartment with quiet, comfortable ambiance.

 _I don’t think I have anything that’ll fit you,_ Felix says from his bedroom, finally pulling out a baggy pair of running shorts that wind up looking absolutely ridiculous on Sylvain. _It’s alright,_ Sylvain laughs, stripping down to his t-shirt and boxers, trying to ignore the way Felix looks at him, a glint of hunger in his eyes. _You’ve seen me in less._

Felix leans up against his bedroom doorway with his arms crossed when he’s done, an amused smile playing over his lips. He looks beautiful in the low light, eyes soft and sleepy, hair pulled out of that crisp ponytail and into a loose braid that hangs down his back, drowning in an oversized sleep shirt.

“Looks like someone missed you.”

Trout’s completely stretched out along Sylvain’s side, purring so loudly he can feel it through the couch cushions as he scratches a hand lazily up and down his bared, fluffy belly. Sylvain grins. “Yeah, I think he might’ve.” He shifts, gently scooping Trout up and spilling him onto his neatly folded sweater, before patting the newfound space next to him, raising a hopeful eyebrow over at Felix. 

Sylvain always felt like Felix would fit perfectly into his side, and he secretly thrills that his suspicions were right. He drapes a loose arm around Felix’s shoulder, rubbing slow circles into his arm until his limbs unclench and he slowly relaxes into his side. There are a handful of songs Sylvain recognizes on the album that plays, and he hums along to them in low pieces as Felix presses his nose into his shoulder, breathing slowing down and evening out. Sylvain thinks he’s maybe even fallen asleep – that is, until Felix exhales, so quietly he almost misses it: 

“Did you mean it?”

Sylvain blinks down at the top of Felix’s head, working to comb through everything he’s said tonight to try and parse what Felix means. He comes up empty-handed, watching as Felix pulls back, not quite meeting his eyes, lips twisting in frustration as he tries to find the words.

“When you said you… _wanted me,_ since the café. Did you mean it?”

Felix’s voice is laced with nervous vulnerability, like he can’t believe he’s asking for this reassurance, like he can’t possibly imagine a world where he’d be truly, irrevocably wanted. Something in Sylvain’s chest aches, because he knows firsthand how much it hurts, to _want_ so badly to believe. He sits back so that he can look at Felix, truly look at him: repositioning himself so that their legs are crossed and their knees touch. Sylvain reaches out to cradle the curve of Felix’s jaw in one palm. “Oh, Felix, _yes.”_

Felix’s worried scowl softens. He presses his cheek into Sylvain’s hand, just the tiniest bit, closing his eyes, letting out a sigh. Sylvain waits patiently, letting the sweetness sink in. 

When Felix opens his eyes again, they flash late-summer gold, so beautiful it almost hurts. That boldness from earlier returns, Felix’s palms curling into the cotton of Sylvain’s white t-shirt when he pushes him back against the cushions, shuffling forward to kneel between his legs. Sylvain can’t look away, stuck in the sweetness of Felix’s honey gaze as he runs his hands up and down the contours of Sylvain’s neck, fingertips curling through auburn waves.

“Can I– can I kiss you?” Felix’s voice is all rough velvet, low and husky in Sylvain’s ear. Sylvain can’t help but laugh, because he doesn’t think his answer will ever change.

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, sweetheart.”

_Every note you hum is a classic through and through_ _  
__I’ll add them to a playlist called ‘things I look forward to,’_  
 _It’s my favorite, even if no one will play it_ _  
_I only want a future filled with you

_—_

Felix wakes up slowly. 

The first thing he notices is that his lips are chapped and a little swollen. It makes sense; they’d spent half of last night wrapped up in one another, kissing until they were both breathless, only taking breaks to share bites from a box of takeout courtesy of Felix’s favorite late-night deli a few blocks over. It’d been unfamiliar, in a sweet sort of way, sharing space with Sylvain on his couch like it was any other night, relaxing every tightly-wound muscle into the pillow of Sylvain’s chest as he stroked through Felix’s hair with careful attention that he’d never deserve.

The second thing Felix notices, as he turns from his back to his side, is that Sylvain is still here. His hair cascades umber across the pillow, mouth parted in the tease of a snore. One of his arms is flung over his head, hand stretched towards Felix; the other is slung heavy over Felix’s hip, pulling him close as Sylvain shifts and squirms into him. The movement sends a hot rush of blood to Felix’s cheeks, that tingling curiosity a low tremor through each nerve ending where their skin brushes.

(He wants Sylvain – of _course_ he wants Sylvain, in every single way he’ll let Felix have him – but Sylvain’s question last night had punctured the anxious bubble in his chest that’d been growing there since their first kiss all those weeks ago. That _oh god, I want this more than I should_ bubble, that feeling of permanent freefall finally disintegrating into sheer relief when Sylvain had murmured _we don’t have to do anything,_ tentative and unsure in the hushed dark of his kitchen.)

Max’s sunflowers sit on the bedside table in a vase Sylvain had found on the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard last night. Their faces turn toward the filtered, fading sunrise, amethyst-rose clouds kissing the heliotrope horizon in a way Felix has only ever seen a handful of times in his life, and only ever in Montreal. Felix can’t stop the foolish smile that blooms across his face at the sight of their gold petals, a real reminder – just as real as Sylvain breathing quietly next to him – that last night actually _happened,_ that Felix hadn’t just dreamt it all up. 

Sylvain was there, in the gallery – he’d touched Felix’s cheeks and kissed him breathless, but not before looking at Felix’s painting like he’d seen something in the blurred brushstrokes that he’d been looking for. A complicated swell of emotions rise through him when he remembers what came after, Glenn’s disbelieving _you’re Miklan’s brother?_ forever etched into his mind. 

That ugly truth wasn’t something Felix could’ve ever expected, a sharp slap of reality to bring him down off the floating, fizzy high he’d found in the sweetness of Sylvain’s mouth, in the line of his jaw. He thinks of the conversation they’d had over the last saccharine dregs of wine – of Sylvain’s father’s funeral, of the bitter sorrow of seeing his brother for the first time in years. It makes something bone-deep in Felix’s chest hurt. 

Trout hops up onto the edge of the bed, kneading biscuits into the striped duvet, which shifts Sylvain towards him. He burrows in closer, nose finding Felix’s neck to smear clumsy kisses there, breath hot against his skin. Something about the morning makes it easier to be soft, to let Sylvain slip through the cracks of his armor and enjoy the feeling of his lips dragging across his pulse. 

“Good morning,” Sylvain rumbles, his voice low and sleep-stricken. It sounds better than Felix ever imagined, even in his most vivid dreams.

“Hi,” Felix mumbles back. He closes his eyes to the bright morning light, chasing the remnants of sleep as Sylvain’s arm wraps him up closer. Trout decides on a suitable spot at the foot of the bed, low purrs vibrating up through the mattress.

“You’re freezing, love,” Sylvain mumbles into his neck, stretching an arm up and around Felix’s head, drawing him in closer. Felix lets him, his body soft and compliant in the blurred edge between dawn and day. His heart stops up somewhere between his chest and his throat at the word _love,_ uttered carelessly and casually, something that cuts too close to the heat that spreads prickly-hot in his chest. Felix presses his toes into the soft downy hair on Sylvain’s calves, suppressing a laugh when he shivers against him.

“Warm me up, then.”

Sylvain raises an eyebrow, slowly nudging his nose against Felix’s cheek to finally slot their lips together. They kiss, languid sweet ones that leave him breathless, ignoring the taste of sleep in Sylvain’s mouth as Felix re-learns the shape of him, this time in the sun-drenched morning rather than the glow of the streetlights. His hands rub slow circles up and down Sylvain’s side, reveling in the thrum of his heartbeat against his chest, a steady beat that echoes in his own veins, just a breath out of sync.

When Sylvain finally pulls away, there’s a wide, bright smile across his face, cheeks flushed a salmon-peach that creeps down his neck and under the collar of his t-shirt.

“Hey,” he whispers, half breathless.

“Hey.” Felix sits up, leaning on an elbow to stroke across the day-old scruff on Sylvain’s chin. 

Sylvain hums, leaning into his touch, smiling big and barely-crooked. His single dimple creases into his cheek, and Felix lets his fingertips wander there, mapping each dip and curve. He idly traces patterns into the constellation of freckles over one cheek, fingers seeking out simple shapes first – a circle, a triangle, a square – before connecting them together in more complicated motifs: the delicate five petals of a springtime cherry blossom; the crest of a rolling wave flecked with salty seafoam; the shape of _I want to kiss you_ pushed through his throat to hang in the air between them, the best answer Felix could’ve ever gotten.

“What are your plans today?” Sylvain asks, turning his head to place a chaste kiss to Felix’s palm.

 _Kissing you stupid,_ Felix thinks. He leans in for one, pressing his lips to the corner of Sylvain’s smile, just because he finally can. He could get used to waking up like this: warm in the shelter of Sylvain’s arms, kissing until they lose track of time. 

He doesn’t have an answer to Sylvain’s question. Truthfully, he hasn’t really thought about it. Felix has spent nearly every waking hour eating, breathing, _inhaling_ his collection, going to bed with paint in the creases of his fingers and palms and waking up wrapped in ink-stained sheets, completely consumed by the need to _create, create, create._

Now? He feels a little untethered, light in a way he hasn’t felt in months, maybe even years. It’s equally terrifying and thrilling, to have an entire Saturday free of obligations – not just a couple of snatched hours between classes or sessions or errands.

“I don’t have any.” Felix traces his knuckles across the line of Sylvain’s jaw. It’s quickly becoming his favorite shape, one worth learning over and over again. “Do you?”

Sylvain smiles, pressing him down gently until his head hits the pillow and Sylvain’s propped over him, backlit by sunshine. “Well, I was hoping to take you out to breakfast. A good, sit-down place, not just bagels.”

Felix scowls, wrinkling his nose as he looks up at Sylvain. It’s completely unfair, how good he looks right after waking – smile soft and sleepy, wrinkled lines criss-crossing his cheeks in a fading imprint of the pillowcase. “What’s wrong with bagels?”

“Nothing. I was just hoping to take you on a proper date.”

Something light flutters in Felix’s stomach. _Date._ The word makes everything feel very real. 

Sylvain’s smile falters, a sliver of worry slipping through when he doesn’t immediately respond, turning the word over in his mind. There’s still uncertainty there, in how Sylvain looks at Felix like he might bolt if given the chance. 

“If that’s okay with you?” Sylvain prompts, nudging a close-mouthed kiss to Felix’s forehead. 

Felix nods, extracting his arms from the tangled sheets to loop around the back of Sylvain’s neck and drag him down for more, his usual three cups of coffee replaced by the warmth of Sylvain’s mouth. _I’ll take that as a yes,_ Sylvain rumbles between laughter and peppered kisses, even as Felix murmurs it a dozen times against freckled skin:

 _Yes,_ pressed into the curve of Sylvain’s neck as Felix’s teeth map the beating pulse of his heart, the jut of his carotid and the sharp edge of his collarbone, devoted to learning each and every piece of him, from all the ways his smile can feel across Felix’s skin to the rawest parts of his heart. He’s struck by overwhelming _want,_ to keep Sylvain here, to pin him down to the bed and live in the warmth of their mouths together.

 _Yes,_ sighed into the slick heat of Sylvain’s mouth as they both ignore the offended _meow_ Trout gives, grumpily jumping off the bed when Felix flips Sylvain around and deposits himself into the shelter of his lap and Sylvain’s hands find their way to thread through sleep-mussed hair. Each kiss tastes like fire, especially like this, Sylvain’s mouth moving down the line of his throat to suck small marks there while Felix lets his fingertips skirt over the tops of Sylvain’s shoulders, sighing sleepily into tangled crimson. 

_Yes,_ between smiles so wide they make Felix’s cheeks ache, laughter so hard it hurts his sides when Sylvain’s fingers graze over his most unloved, untouched spots: dancing up the slope of his spine, trailing reverence across the tops of his thighs, twirling in the tangle of his hair across the pillow. _Who knew you’d be so ticklish,_ Sylvain gets out around a laugh as Felix nips into his neck, squirming against the shivers Sylvain smooths up and down his sides. 

_Yes,_ as the sun slides across the sky, as the hours slip away and they still haven’t left the warm haven of Felix’s bed, too wrapped up in each other to care much at all about how every good brunch spot has probably closed – that is, until Felix’s stomach rumbles with hunger and Sylvain’s reply is bright laughter, filling the apartment with warmth. He ignores Sylvain’s half-hearted attempt to peel their bodies apart and pull the duvet off, fingernails digging pink crescents around Sylvain’s wrist to drag him back down into the halcyon haze of worn linen, content to live on touch and taste alone when Sylvain smiles, and laughs, and kisses him. 

_Yes, yes, yes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn. i can't believe this rollercoaster ride of mutual pining, miscommunication, and a whole lot of bagels is finally over! this fic is my baby, and i've been so very lucky to have incredible friends and betas (cha + levi, i can't thank you enough) cheering me on, fixing my grammar, and showering me in love and support while i worked on this.
> 
> i really hope that you enjoyed the ending to this story! i have plenty of ideas floating around to continue to expand on this AU (glenn + holst's wedding, anyone?) that i'd love to write eventually if there's interest in that!
> 
> every comment means the world to me (and i'm slowly working through responding to them!)
> 
> thank you, thank you, thank you ❤️
> 
> —
> 
> listen to the [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0bQCzH8x9ZKZeuZ3FchI5E?si=-qwOUMoaSxelP1d9yrm5QA) i created to accompany this fic – each of the section dividers are lyrics pulled from songs on it!
> 
> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/cherryconke) for more sylvix shenanigans ❤️


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